


You Chase Away the Chill in Me

by outofperdition



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Adventure, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst, Blow Jobs, Cold, Confusion, Curses, Dean is a little obtuse, F/M, First Time, Frottage, Het and Slash, M/M, Rimming, Schmoop, Sexual Content, Wincest - Freeform, Witches, because let's be honest, the OFCS are exotic dancers who just want to fuck the Winchesters, who wouldn't
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-08
Updated: 2014-07-08
Packaged: 2018-02-03 20:01:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 39,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1755791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/outofperdition/pseuds/outofperdition
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam gets colder and colder, and it falls on Dean to figure out how to keep him warm. At first, it's just kind of weird. The longer it keeps up, though, the more they both question just what kind of chill this is - and how the solution will affect them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first Supernatural fanfic. It's, uh, not what I expected. For one thing, it's longer than I ever meant it to be. It was just supposed to be porn, damnit. How dare it develop a plot?
> 
> For now, I'm planning on three chapters. The number will change if that does. And I swear, this fic does and will live up to all the risque tags and its Explicit rating.

The first time Sam turns up the heat in the Impala, they're outside of Boulder, CO. It's November. Dean doesn't really notice. The Legos in the vent rattle in perfect time with Shoot to Thrill, like an added rhythm section made of plastic memories.

They're speeding away from an excise of witchcraft that even by Winchester standards went surprisingly well. Sam warms his hands in the gust from the dash and raises his eyebrows at Dean in one of those "did we get lucky or what" rue smiles; Dean returns a cavalier grin and an extra-raucous chorus line. They stop for the night in Monte Vista, and the diner they choose is offering two-for-one burger platters. Life is good.

*

In Albuquerque, Sam buys a sweater.

"Dude," Dean says, eying the thick alpaca weave as Sam struggles into it, "aren't you more of a hoodie guy?"

Sam's ruffled head pops free. "I dunno," he says with a graceless shrug, trying to get the fabric settled on his broad shoulders. "It looked warm."

Dean doesn't see him take it off the entire hunt. He thinks his brother might even sleep in it. They salt and burn a corpse at midnight, Dean in his leather and Sam in his llama, and Sam takes greater pains than he normally would to not get dirty.

He still has to wash it. Grave dirt is persistent. Dean watches him do the laundry through narrowed eyes.

"You cold?" he asks the shivering line of Sam's back. He stands, shrugs out of his jacket. Sam is trying to shrug with nonchalance and failing miserably with each little tremor. Dean drapes him in Dad's old leather armor.

"That oughta help," he says. He answers Sam's pathetic look of gratitude with a manly slap on the back.

*

Midway through December, they get a call from Bobby about a series of mysterious deaths in upstate New York. Dean snaps the phone shut and glances over at Sam, who's huddled over his laptop like a campfire.

"After this one, how about we make like snowbirds and check out some Miami beaches?" he suggests. They've never been to Miami. Sam perks up and starts Googling the best spots down south for guys like them, but when they leave the room he moves like every inch is hard won.

The hunt is even worse. Albany is covered in snow. Dean has to keep slowing his gait, waiting for his hulk of a little brother to stagger along beside him. Sam looks pained; well, Dean thinks that's a pained look, he can really only see Sam's hazel eyes through the mass of hat and scarves and layered coats. Where Sam acquired all of this, Hell only knows. He looks like a bag lady.

"Maybe I should play agent this time," Dean says when they reach the police station. He's only wearing his greatcoat. By the time Sam can unravel himself from his pile of fabric, the county will have had time to run several background checks. "You run along to the library, Boy Wonder, do your usual brainy thing."

Sam purses his lips (Dean would know the way those eyes slit and crinkle anywhere) and turns to begin the slow trek up the street. Dean watches him go and wonders what he missed.

His mind is whirling on it even as he charms young Lt. Perry into giving him the necessary files. In the morgue, he shivers despite the wool of his coat, and frowns down at a lacerated corpse. Something is wrong with Sam, but there have been too many reckless drunken nights and long, driving-coma days of late for Dean's brain to make much sense of it.

When he gets back to their room, Sam is a mountain of blankets in the middle of his bed. Dean tosses a sack of tacos over and hits him in what Dean thinks might be his arm.

"Can you stick them under here?" comes extremely muffled from the vicinity of Sam's head.

Dean frowns at the huddled lump of his brother. "You are not eating tacos in bed," he says archly. He loosens his tie, slides off his shoes, keeping an eye on the taco bag in case it starts a fast trek to the floor.

"Why not?" Sam snaps back. "You eat in bed all the time."

"But on top of the covers, Sammy." Dean unbuttons his shirt with cavalier flicks of his wrist. "We don't know how long we'll be here, you don't want to wake up every morning smelling like strange meat."

Sam mutters something.

"What was that?"

"I said, isn't that sort of part of our job description anyway?" Sam says waspishly, and far more intelligibly, as his head pops free of the blankets. He looks like a poorly-groomed Chia pet. Dean tries to hold in his laughter.

He fails.

*

The next morning they interview witnesses. Dean wonders if he's the only one who can tell how miserable Sam is in just his thin FBI suit. He keeps rubbing his huge hands together, cupping them over his face. His nose is tinged pink, his jaw clenched tight. Dean can't stop stealing glances at him even though he can tell it's annoying the witness.

"Don't you usually run hot?" he asks over a steaming cup of coffee. Sam drinks it way too hot with a noise that's equal parts pain and satisfaction.

"Usually," is all he says.

Between the three interviews and the local lore, they're able to pinpoint the monster's identity before sundown that day. Dean offers to go out that night and finish it himself.

"Don't be stupid," Sam says, struggling into his alpaca sweater. Then a hoodie. Then a windbreaker. "We're in this together."

Very quietly, Dean thinks that they're in something, and it might not just be the middle of a hunt. Maybe more like deeper and deeper shit.

*

The road to Miami is pretty straightforward. It's almost the new year, almost the coldest time, but the further south they drive the more Sam perks up. He's down to a long-sleeved Henley -- which Dean notes with conflicting emotions is his -- by the time they hit the Florida border.

Dean suggests they find a room on the beach, and is greeted by a blinding smile. Sam hasn't smiled so wide his dimples showed in months. Dean hadn't realized he missed it.

It's still kind of chilly in Miami. It is winter, after all. The beach is windy, and even at high noon the sunlight is a pale cousin of its robust summer self. Still, Sam seems happier, running after flocks of seagulls in only one jacket, bounding back to Dean like a golden retriever with cheeks rosied by the exertion.

Content, Dean tries unsuccessfully to skip shells into the surf.

That night, though, the temperature drops. Sam spends most of an hour under a hot shower until the hot water runs out, and comes out in a cloud of steam already fully dressed. Dean looks at him helplessly.

Sam throws up his arms. "I don't even know." He sounds just as helpless.

"We'll start looking in the morning," Dean says, though for what he has no clue. He tosses his boots back by the door. No tequila bar for them tonight, after all.

*

Sam goes for a run in the morning. He comes back with breakfast, panting and sweating. Happier. "I think my iron count was low," he says. "I got some vitamins, and now that I've taken one and exercised, I feel great!"

Relief courses through Dean much more strongly than he expected. "Glad to hear it,” he says. "Does that mean we can actually enjoy our vacation now?"

Sam stops wringing sweat out of his hair long enough to shoot his brother a look. "It's not all about girls and bars, Dean," he says disapprovingly. "Miami has a lot of culture, too. We should check out the --"

"You lost me at no bars. Tequila, Sammy! From wayy down south -- the real deal!"

A snort issues from Sam's shirt as he pulls it over his head. "Then how about you just go and get shitfaced, while I go see the Holocaust memorial?"

Dean blanches. "God, Sam, that's depressing. Can't we at least go somewhere fun?"

"There's theme parks... a botanical gardens... the Marlins stadium," Sam lists, digging around in his duffel. Sweat still stands out on his skin.

"Don't you want to take a shower first?" Dean has to ask. If it were him, he'd start to feel sticky.

"Nah," Sam replies, scrutinizing a polo shirt. "Don't wanna press my luck."

*

They end up visiting several (outdoor) attractions, and Dean is surprised to find himself having a good time, despite having his ear nearly pecked off by a parrot at Jungle Park, and losing his hot dog in the street when they have to narrowly avoid being flattened by an impatient Lamborghini.

He eyes the mess on the asphalt sadly. Sam laughs at him and tugs on his arm. "I'll buy you a new one, sad sack," he teases. Dean affects a sniffle to earn some more sympathy. Sam cuffs him on the shoulder.

Dean has almost forgotten his brother's recent affliction, until they pass through a shadow at 6:30 pm and Sam shudders so hard he almost drops his Seaquarium stuffed whale. "Give me that," Dean mutters, snatching the fuzzy orca, and he carries it under his arm to better resist the temptation to sling that arm over Sam. "Let's get some hard drink in you, that'll warm you up."

Whatever Sam retorts is lost in the chatter of his teeth, so Dean ducks them into the first bar he sees and orders them both double shots.

A Hispanic tough at the bar eyes them and their stuffed whale. "You got somethin' to say?" Dean challenges, edging closer to Sam.

"No hable gringo," the man smirks. Dean growls, low in his throat.

Sam stops him with a few fingers on his sleeve. "Dean, it's fine," he says. Their shots arrive and he downs his in one smooth motion, much to Dean's awe, without a sputter or cough. "Let's just find another place."

Sam's cheeks are tinged pink. Dean hurries to slam back his own shot and slap a ten on the bar. "Lead the way," he says, slightly poleaxed.

He just can't figure shit out, lately.

Shots seem to help. By their ninth double of the evening in their third bar, Sam is fairly glowing, sweat sticking curls to his forehead. Dean is weaving more than he'd like, so they duck in a package store on the way back to their shithole and carry some Jose home.

The stuffed whale is placed in a position of honor atop the TV. Dean toasts him with the bottle, and Sam declares his name is Julio Finn.

They pass out on each other's beds, atop the covers, still in their clothes. The TV blares a telenovela on mute, and Julio presides over the silence.

*

Dean wakes up with a major hangover to the sound of Sam audibly shivering. Dean feels like he's overheating, sweating despite his drunken dehydration -- Sam must have cranked the room's radiator all the way up.

"The weather channel says there's a cold front," his brother explains. "I don't think this place was sealed very well."

Not to mention that alcohol thins the blood. Dean doesn't think that interjection would be welcome, though, and goes out in search of searing hot coffee.

If Miami is too cold... Dean finds himself weighing his fear of flying against Sam's wellbeing and stops dead in the middle of the sidewalk. Tourists and locals curse him, flow around him. _This is ridiculous_ , Dean thinks. _We don't have to fly to the equator. There's something going on._

He calls Bobby.

Bobby is apparently busy. "Can't you boys go one week without sticking your heads in some cursed anthill?"

"Something's wrong with Sam," Dean blurts, huddled up against a Starbucks sign declaring its specials in three languages. "He's cold."

"Well, in case you hadn't noticed, princess -- it's the dead of winter," Bobby says. "Tell him to wear a sweater."

"He's wearing five. On the regular," Dean snaps back. "He gets to where he's sweating but then the next minute he's a Popsicle."

"Have you checked his actual temperature?"

At Dean's silence, Bobby sighs. "It is a serious wonder you're still alive, boy. Take your brother's temp and check the Google for the treatment of hypothermia."

"It's not --" Dean protests, but Bobby has already hung up -- "hypothermia," he grumbles to a dead line. "What do you think this is, amateur hour?"

As he walks carefully back to the room, balancing six coffees and a bag of pastries, it occurs to Dean that to Bobby, that's exactly how it sounds.

*

Sam's temperature is 98.4. "What the ever loving fuck," Dean exclaims baldly, staring between the little plastic thermometer and his bundled-up brother. Sam's shrug barely registers through the blankets.

"Tomorrow I'll run again," he says. "That seemed to help."

"Yeah, but --"

"There's a perfectly reasonable explanation for this, Dean," Sam says patiently. Unspoken lingers, _there has to be_.

Sam spends the day reading up on Miami lore, "just in case we need to take care of something while we're here." The room is far too stifling for Dean, who slips out to wander the tourist traps. He calls Bobby while he's waffling between a bright orange sombrero and a miniature tricked-out Cadillac.

Bobby sobers when Dean tells him the number. "Are you sure?"

"He was freezing his nuts off under both our blankets, and we checked three times; yeah, I'm sure." Dean nearly drops the little car and places it gingerly back on the shelf.

"When did it start?"

Uhh... Dean's mind blanks on that one. "New York?" he hazards a guess. "That was a poltergeist, though, nothing special."

"Did it ever get its hands on Sam?"

Dean thinks. "It threw both of us around, but it used these wooden... door... things to do it. Never actually touched us. In life, the vic was a germophobe."

He ignores the alarmed look on the cashier's face and saunters out of the shop. The air is cool, but the sunlight warms his shoulders. It isn't long before he has to shrug his jacket off.

"Where are you now?"

"Miami." Dean glances around, all the bright colors and tanned skin blending into a muddle. "I don't get it, Bobby. He usually holds in heat better than I do. Now I'm the one sweating my skin off while he's over there wearing all his clothes at once."

He hears the rustle of papers over the line. "For now, just keep him moving. He should feel warmer if the blood's flowing."

"Yeah, he said he feels better after a run."

"Exercise it is, then. I'll see if I can find any connections, but usually a spirit only affects temperature while it's still hangin' around."

"And it definitely ain't," Dean says with relish. Old Peter Robeson had gone up in satisfying, theatrical flames.

"Keep in touch," Bobby says, already distracted, and hangs up.

Dean unlocks the room and bustles in, almost bowling Sam over. Sam is dressed for a run, goosebumps prickling all over his exposed skin.

Eying his brother, Dean toes off his shoes. "You feeling up to that?"

"I'm sick of shivering, so yeah," Sam says. "Don't worry, I've been drinking water all morning, and I don't exactly plan to do sprints." He jogs past and out into the afternoon sun. In a brief glimpse, it paints his hair and skin a ruddy gold.

"Hurry back," Dean mumbles as the door swings shut.

Since he's alone, Dean entertains himself and Julio Finn with Spanish soaps. For some reason his mind keeps running back over Sam in fewer clothes with something like relief. He'll get better, he tells himself, and grabs the not-quite-empty bottle of tequila so he can better relate to young Pedro's misfortunes.

*

Despite the improvement of Sam's odd condition, Dean is starting to get sick of Miami. They've been there a week and he's visited every bar within a twenty-five mile radius. He's slept with some women who didn't speak English, and others who spoke it too well. He's narrowly avoided all manner of STDs, and there is no brand of tequila in the city he hasn't tried.

He's itching to feel the miles ticking away beneath his Baby's wheels.

Sam finds them a job, entirely by accident, and Dean jumps on it. He tries to ignore the despondent looks his brother keeps casting his way.

"Virginia isn't that far north," he says. Sam makes a noise in the back of his throat that, a little higher, could be considered a whine.

"We never work the east coast," he tries.

Dean scoffs at him. "Just keep going on your morning runs. That helps, right?"

Sam mutters something like _not the point_ but Dean whistles as he starts packing his duffel, so he can say he didn't hear.

They're cresting the Blue Ridge mountains before the cassette hits a slow song and Dean realizes that the Legos in the dash are having some kind of conniption fit. He glances down at the thermostat. "Ninety?!" he yelps. "No wonder I'm sweating, Sam; Jesus!"

Sam just hunches miserably in his seat. Dean tries to take pity on the kid, but he's swimming in his own juices and his balls have permanently adhered to his thigh. He tries just wrestling out of his jacket, Sam grabbing the wheel so they don't plummet over the side of the mountain.

In five minutes, he's feeling phantom heat waves, and ends up twitching the dial down to 85. In the next five, Sam's chattering teeth start giving the Legos a run for their money.

Dean sighs, turns the heat back up, and puts on Zeppelin IV. It soothes him.

*

The ranger they meet off Blue Ridge Parkway the next morning eyes a severely bundled Sam without pity. Dean tries to recapture the guy's attention. "So, the last hiker to disappear took the Appalachian trail?"

He doesn't like the way the ranger's eyes catch on Sam as they drag back over to meet his. "Yessir," the guy says, "about four days ago. Search party found his pack, all clawed up. Could have been a wolf, or a bear..."

The way he trails off is telling. Dean presses, "But?"

"But I've never seen a wolf or bear with claws that big. Not up here," the ranger says. "And there wasn't that much blood, too little for an animal attack 'f you ask me." He's looking at Sam again.

Dean bristles, but manages a pleasant tone when he asks, "You think we could get a map of those trails?"

"Sure thing." The ranger wanders over to riffle through a drawer. When he hands Dean a folded mass of paper, he's back to eying Sam. "You boys sure you want to hike out in this weather?" he asks. "It gets mighty chilly out there, even during the day. Not for the, uh, faint of heart."

"We'll be fine," Sam says archly, first thing he's said, and it's ruined by a slight, chilled stutter on the b.

Back at the room, Dean is changing into his thickest pair of jeans. "Are you sure you want to come?" he asks his brother, practically pleading him to reconsider. Sam winds a long, woolen scarf into an intricate balaclava.

"I'm not letting you take on a daeva by yourself," he shoots back.

Dean glances at the evidence photos. "What if it's just a --"

"A wolf? Really, Dean?"

"Could be a werewolf," Dean tries feebly.

"The corpses are gone," Sam says. He's so matter-of-fact when he knows he's right. Drives Dean up a tree. "You know as well as I do that lack of blood with claws that size marks a mature daeva under very strict control. Werewolf would have left blood everywhere, and a heartless corpse." He doesn't follow up with _you idiot_ , doesn't even sound like it, but Dean hears it all the same.

Dean sighs, checking the load and sight of his favorite pistol. Beautiful, as always. "What are the odds we'll find both of 'em together before slick, summoned and deadly finds us?"

Sam cinches up the hood of his parka and says, with muffled finality, "It's a chance we'll have to take. At least we know how to get rid of it."

"Yeah," Dean scoffs humorlessly. "Never thought I'd say Meg was good for anything. Ever."

Sam just loads their roadside flare gun with a snap that echoes, ominous in Dean's ears, and hands it to him.

*

They find the hiker seven miles off the path, well past the radius of the park service search party. The corpse has been well-preserved by the recent freezes, and still sports icicles in shadowed places.

Dean shed his outer layer halfway through the hike, and plucks in distaste at the circles of sweat around his collar, under his arms. The only sign that Sam has warmed at all during the trek is a slight tugging-down of his crazy scarf. Dean can barely see his brother's lips when Sam says, low, "Here's the target -- where's the weapon?"

There's never a chance to answer. Something preternaturally fast strikes Dean around his trunk and carries him into a tree. He hits with a sickening snap that radiates up his body in waves of disbelief, heat and chill, and he blacks out.

He comes to minutes later, struggling, blinking up into the snarling face of the hiker's sister. They'd interviewed her as agents Bachman and Turner just last evening.

"No way you two are feds," she spits, pulling the rope she's wound around him and the tree so taut Dean can't help his winded gasp. He thinks a rib or two might be bruised, maybe cracked.

"You're in trouble, all the same," he growls, trying to sound menacing through his wheeze. She laughs in his face. Behind her shoulder in the deeper shadows rises a sleek, darker shape. The daeva. Only its shadow is visible to the human eye.

"Was it worth it?" Dean pants, trying to distract her.

"What, you think this was all for revenge? Oh, you petty man," she says. She moves from his line of sight, and Dean finds he can't really turn his head. She's wound a crown of rope tight against his forehead.

"Sam?" he croaks.

The woman ducks back in front of him, her dirty blonde hair swinging over her crazed eyes. "Your partner isn't in much of a position to answer, I'm afraid," she says delightedly. "It's barely sundown, still plenty warm, but he's shivering like he's freezing his ass off in the two layers I left him." She cackles, adding slyly, "Some kind of condition?"

"You bitch!" Dean spits. "Sammy!" he roars, craning his neck this way and that until his forehead starts to burn.

His captor moves around the tree and he hears her say, from behind the trunk, "Oh, dear. His lips are turning blue."

Dean's barely listening. He's twisted his fingers around to grasp the bone handle of the knife he keeps in his belt. If he's very, very careful...

It pops free, slicing his back, but he bites his bottom lip against a yelp and begins to saw apart his bonds. His mind is a searing, repeating mantra of _Sam, Sam, Sam_ \-- The woman circles back around to regard him in the failing light.

"Do you know why none of this matters?"

Dean doesn't care. He has to get to Sam. He waits til she leans in close to tell him, then lunges forward and buries the knife in her neck.

A shrill keen sounds from nearby. Fuck, the daeva. Now without a master to hold its leash it'll be frenzied and attack any living thing it sees. Dean struggles out of the rest of the rope, fumbling for the flare gun.

A mass of not-quite-solid matter strikes him and lays him out, again. He swears; why does this keep happening? At least there wasn't a tree this time. Small miracles. His ribs are burning as he gasps in a breath, and struggles to stand.

Flickering in the corner of his eye; he whirls and fires, striking the shadow-stuff of the daeva with a bursting flare. The screech of it as it shreds is so inhuman it seems to grate deep inside Dean's head, and he double-taps with the other flare as much to make sure it's dead as to save his ears.

He skids to his knees in the loam and leaves beside Sam, who slumps unconscious against his bonds. Even knocked out, he's shivering violently, far too pale and cold to the touch. "Goddamnit, Sammy," Dean mutters, slicing his hand several times in his haste to cut the ropes that bind his brother. Sam flops over in his arms, and Dean knows there's no way he can haul the Sasquatch over seven miles before the sun sets completely. Not with his ribs spitting dull fire like this.

The ranger's map reveals a cave half a mile to the north. Dean strips out of most of his layers and adds them to Sam's, refusing to dwell on the limp shake of his brother's limbs. Stripped down to his undershirt, still damp with sweat, he shoulders Sam's bundled form and leaves the woman to the actual wolves.

*

Caves are weird. This one is dry in places but soaked in others, evidence of incomplete freezes. Dean stalks back pretty far into the hole before he's satisfied they won't be having an impromptu sleepover with some carnivore, and then he hauls Sam inside. His exertion has protected him from the cold so far, but even a Winchester can only go so long in freezing cold wearing only a t-shirt. Dean's shivers are starting to match Sam's for intensity.

He steals a jacket back from Sam and leaves his brother slumped against the wall, darting out for a cursory gathering of wood. He has to get a fire started, fast. His thoughts have narrowed to a thin stream of _Sam - warm - safe - now_ and he cracks branches over his knee without even noticing the echoing, stabbing pains in his ribs.

By the time the blaze is crackling merrily, Sam is starting to stir. Dean has gathered him close and is sitting there staring emptily into the flames, trying to match his breathing. "Dean?" Sam groans, stretching out. A massive shudder wracks him, sends him flailing into Dean, who can't help his cry of pain when it takes him completely by surprise.

Sam is instantly alert. "Dean, you're hurt!" he exclaims, his voice raspy. Dean tries to wave him off, but Sam forces his arms away from his chest, runs huge but gentle hands up under his scant layers. Dean hisses when bruises are pressed.

"Dean..." Sam breathes.

"Not broken," Dean says. It takes more effort than it should.

"At least two of them are cracked, or I'm the Impala," Sam retorts. "Lie flat on your back."

"But you --"

"Dean!" Sam thunders. "Lie down!"

Dean meekly complies. His sigh when he stretches out is completely involuntary.

He almost protests when his brother ranges out beside him, but the long line of Sam's body heat in counterpoint to the fire on his other side actually makes him drowsy. "Wish we had a blanket," he mutters, "or some whiskey."

"Thinner blood is the last thing you need right now," Sam says in the language of yawns. It's the last thing either of them says until morning, succumbing to a cocoon of hurt and comfort.

*

Dean wakes warm and content. He blinks slowly, focusing on the rough cave ceiling until he remembers where he is. Then, he draws in the morning's first, deep breath.

Pain stabs sure and quick, wrapping his lungs in a blinding vise, and he's doubling up with an animal whine before he even knows what hit him.

Strong hands grab his shoulders. "Dean!" Sam's voice cuts through the haze. "Dean, relax. Take shallow breaths, and relax."

In tentative increments, Dean does as he's told. The pain only lessens slightly.

"Your ribs are cracked, remember?" Sam says, probably aiming for soothing. _Don't talk to me like I'm five, Sammy_ , is what Dean wants to say, but all that comes out is a grunt. His entire chest feels like he slept on the embers smoldering on the cave's floor beside them.

"We need to wrap them." When the words process Dean is all ready to protest, _no, Sammy, you need your layers_ , but Sam is already stripping off jackets and shirts to get to a sturdy plaid. With a deft touch, he sets about binding Dean's chest, rolling him slowly when needed and lifting only slightly. When he's done, the pain has lessened considerably. Dean feels a bleary pride, and lets it show in the smile he gives his brother when their eyes meet.

Eventually, he's able to sit up with only a minor catch to his breath. Sam helps him stand, and together they hobble to the mouth of the cave.

It's snowing. Because, of course.

The brothers look at each other. Dean can see a million things racing through Sam's eyes, can only imagine what Sam sees in his.

They speak in unison: "Can you make it?"

Dean snorts and says, "Sure," over Sam's quieter, "Gonna have to."

They share another long look to the patter of softly falling snow.

Sam is the first to look away. "We're losing daylight," he says to the wall. Dean studies the line of him, the set of his shoulders. Sees him trying not to shiver.

"Yeah," he capitulates, hitching around and stalking stiffly back to their things. "Let's get a move on."

He pointedly doesn't see whatever look Sammy gives him. Let the kid be annoyed, grateful, whatever. Dean's body is screaming for a real goddamn bed, and the pain killers he knows are in the Impala's trunk.

*

Naturally, the flat motel mattress is Heaven. Dean lays himself out gingerly and groans his thanks into it, musty smell and all. His ribs are wrapped tight with Ace bandages, and so long as he doesn't breathe too deeply, he actually feels all right. The Percosets are probably kicking in, too.

They'd met the ranger and three others on their way back, a search party looking for them. The ranger had the tact to refrain from looking smug as he'd wrapped them in blankets. Sam, through chattering teeth, had outlined a 'civilian safe' explanation of what they'd found. By that point, Dean's own vocabulary had been reduced to one-syllable grunts.

Sam exits the bathroom, billowing steam. "Feel like ordering pizza?"

"Whatever," Dean says into the mattress. "I'm not moving."

He must fall asleep, because next he knows is dark, the room is cold, and there's someone wrapped up in the blankets beside him.

One guess. "Sam?" he queries groggily.

"Shut up," his brother slurs sleepily. "'s cold."

"No shit," Dean agrees. He's still in his clothes and boots. Toeing those off, he struggles to get under some of the blankets. Sam tries to roll out of his way, or something, and ends up digging an elbow right into a sorely sensitive spot.

Dean's howl of pain wakes Sam up properly. "Fuck, I'm sorry," he says, voice still husky from sleep.

"Never mind," Dean says through gritted teeth. "Just let me under and don't move."

He's not even sure Sam breathes as he situates himself so that they're back to back. "And, goodnight," Dean grouses into his pillow, and promptly passes out.

*

Soft strains of music, some kind of classical guitar, emanate from the other side of the wall. It lends a certain romantic air to the serious make-out session Dean's engaged in with a seriously hot brunette brick house.

She breaks the kiss with a sensual smack of lips and smirks at him. Dean likes a woman with attitude. He grabs a handful of her smooth hips and tugs, rutting forward into the clash of heat.

The girl moans, and bucks into him again, her curves slotting against him perfectly. Dean works up into a rolling rhythm, sliding a hand around the back of her neck and pulling her into another deep kiss. She smells familiar.

"Dean..." she purrs, digging her nails into his side. That kind of hurts. He shakes it off, nuzzles into her collarbone and bites, his hips juddering into hers a little harder. She feels so good, he feels so --

"Dean!"

 _Sammy_. "Shit, Sammy!" Dean trips into overdrive, lurching away from his brother and off the opposite side of the bed, landing hard on the floor. He's awake, in pain, and mortified.

Little Dean still insists there's a girl up there, and that he'd like to finish this round with her, if nobody minds. Dean grinds the heel of his hand into the bulge of his crotch and hisses.

"Uh, Dean?" Sam ventures from where Dean can't see him.

"Not a word," Dean growls.

"You, uh --"

"Sam," he warns.

A tousled head peers over the edge. Dean scrambles to cover his shame with the trailing blankets. "You okay down there?" Sam asks, only slightly cheeky.

Dean lets his glower speak for him. "You gonna go for your run, Slushee pup?"

"Nah," Sam says, disappearing back on to the bed. "I'm not cold."

"Good, then you can get breakfast." Dean has various wounds -- ribs, pride -- to nurse.

*

They're on the road to Texas. "A Tasmanian devil, Sammy!" Dean says excitedly. His ribs feel worlds better, Sam didn't try to have any soul-searching talks about the early-morning faux pas, and according to the weather channel, the Lone Star state is experiencing an unseasonable heat wave. Everything's coming up Winchester.

"You know they don't actually look or act like Taz, right?" Sam says from the passenger seat. Dean ignores him. He's just pissy because he still can't get warm.

It's less easy for Dean to ignore the pang of worry in his gut.

Two days ago, he'd called Bobby again. "I don't know what to tell you," the man had said, much to Dean's frustration. "I've put out some calls to a few contacts; psychics and healers, mostly. If one of em thinks they can help, I'll let you know."

In the meantime, Texas. Probably the best place for Sam to be right now. Not to mention:

"The Tasmanian devil," Dean says triumphantly, pulling up the newspaper article that'd drawn him in to begin with. It sported a blurry photo and six eyewitness accounts. Sam, ever skeptical, read over his shoulder.

"While the Tasmanian devil is in fact a creature more closely related to the hyena, and not found on the continental US, those who have seen this phenomenon swear it to be a specter straight out of Warner Brothers, Inc."

Dean refrains from blurting "told you!" -- barely.

Sam continues. "This apparition has been cited as the source of blame for over $50k in property damages, as well as the recent spate of missing cats in Kinney and Maverick counties."

"Missing cats," Dean repeats. "Yum."

"What do you think," Sam muses, "tulpa?"

"Coolest friggin' tulpa ever," Dean enthuses. "Man, why couldn't those assholes in Richardson have come up with something this fun?"

Sam pulls up an insurance photo of a decimated neighborhood. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'd actually prefer Mordecai Murdoch to a localized tornado."

Dean tries too hard not to notice the tremor in his brother's fingers as he types, and misses any chance for a comeback. "But, Taz!" he over-enthuses, much too late.

Sam doesn't even dignify him with a glance.

The first witness they interview is far less thrilled about the whole thing. "If I wanted trenches dug in my yard, I'da hired those spic boys to do it!" snaps Herbert Henderson, 75. "Don't need no goddamn trenches, certainly don't need my fences all tore up!" He pauses to spit, brackish and nasty, in the dirt by Dean's feet. Dean manages to school his reaction to the slightest curl of his lip. The man still notices.

"Go on, get out of here!" the old man rages. "Don't need nobody 'round here judgin' me. You go catch this sumbitch, and don't let me catch you on my property again!"

The brothers beat a hasty retreat.

They walk into town, leaving the Impala parked on a side street. The air is balmy for January, but still Dean catches Sam putting an odd rhythm to his strides in order to stay out of the shade. His wondering what to do about it has faded into a quiet despair at this point.

"Sammy," he starts, but Sam cuts him off.

"I've been looking," his brother says heavily. "Nothing we've run into recently packs this kind of juice."

Dean feels like exploding. "What, then?" he asks heatedly. "What's doing this to you?" He's too sick of it to make what he's saying even a little bit clever. "I'm fucking worried, Sam," he adds quietly.

"I know," his brother says. Dean doesn't have to look at him to hear, _me too._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you like it so far, if you're interested, please leave feedback? I'd appreciate knowing what you think.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, everyone, for your kudos and comments! And to all those just joining in, welcome. 
> 
> A bit of a disclaimer is necessary for this chapter: I don't know a lot about gentleman's clubs, or exotic dancers, but I know enough to know that visits to them probably never go like this...

The witnesses prove fruitless. Dean feels like punching a wall when they slump back to their motel room, unfortunately themed after Gone with the Wind. Said walls are painted a green that's probably supposed to be reminiscent of a Southern plantation (somehow) but to Dean just looks like the painter projectile vomited several times and called it done. The bedspreads are honest-to-god lace duvets. There's even a Scarlet O'Hara lamp on one table, positioned so it looks like she's running after the lamp Rhett Butler on the other.

Sam sits on his bed, suit jacket tossed out beside him, pants pulling up to reveal threadbare leaf-patterned socks. He looks bored and forlorn, and Dean desperately wants to fix both.

So he says the first thing that comes to mind. "I kinda feel like a strip joint."

Sam eyes him. "Good for you," he drawls flatly.

Dean snorts. "Dude, you're starting to sound like the scenery."

"So're you," Sam laughs at him. "You're like a bad imitation of George Bush."

"Senior, or Dubya?" Dean asks, only vaguely insulted, as though it would really make a difference. He starts to unbutton his shirt, then thinks better of it.

"We are going to a strip joint," he says firmly, "and not a dive, either. An actual gentleman's club. We are gentlemen, Sam. We are getting dances from fine-looking women, and reasonably shitfaced. Get your coat."

"Dean, I don't want --"

"Sammy," Dean says firmly. "Those places are always on the tropical side, and running aside, the last time you felt warm enough was after you got drunk." He pointedly ignores the elephant in that statement. "Now move your bony ass. I want to be hot and happy an hour from now." He waggles his eyebrows. "Eh?"

Thankfully, Sam only sighs.

Google directs them to nearby Crystal City, and a place called Jennifer Lynn's. The outside is nothing to scoff at, stately white with pillars and valet service (which Dean refuses to use on principle) but inside, it's another world.

Sam pockets the coat check. Dean pretends not to notice his brother's arched eyebrow when he rubs his hands together eagerly. The foyer is elegantly appointed, marble floors and real wood appointments, with rich curtains hiding the rest of the place from view. The whole ensemble proclaims elegance, and beauty. Even the attendants are stupidly attractive. Promising, to say the least.

Once properly inside, Dean is not disappointed. The intimately-lit main room fairly purrs the idea of class. The stages are secluded, the private booths hung with velvet. The bar looks to be one solid piece of mahogany, and it's so well stocked Dean feels his mouth begin to water. He swallows, and smiles over at Sam. "So, dances or drinks first?"

"I feel like I need to be drunk just to be in here," Sam mutters, fiddling with his loosening tie. Dean swipes his hands away. "You're makin' it crooked, Sammy," he chides, fixing the knot. Sam is radiating heat beneath his hands, and not shivering for once. "Bar it is," Dean says grandly, putting his mind to the task at hand.

The bartender is a tall, slender man with dark eyes and a smile to match. "What can I get you, gentlemen?"

"I'll take a double of Walker Blue, and Sammy?" Sam pretends to gaze over the selection, even though Dean knows as well as he knows his own name what Sam will say. "Just a beer for me, thanks; whatever's on tap."

"Why is it," Dean ribs his brother, "that I always have to order for you to get you properly hammered?"

"What if I don't feel like getting hammered?" Sam counters. "Maybe I want to actually enjoy myself."

Dean gives him a look that ought to plainly say, _there's a difference?_

They take their drinks (Dean shoots his, and orders a sour, plus a bottle; he's feeling magnanimous) to a table in the corner, with a clear view of the entire room, the exits, and three stages. They're not there a minute before a smokin' redhead in black lace saunters up to them. "Offer you fellas a dance?" she asks.

"Oh, hell yes," Dean says, biting his lip. Out of the corner of his eye, he catches Sam's expression as his brother sips his beer, and it's halfway to amused before it derails into something -- Dean doesn't have a chance to dissect it before his lap is full of girl. "What do I call you, sweetheart?" he asks.

"Monica," comes the unlikely reply. It's probably still a pseudonym.

"Well hey there, Monica," he says, slightly breathless.

"Hey there, yourself," she drawls, sinking low over his lap. She's warm, and she smells like something spicy and inviting. "Where you boys from?"

"Uh, here and there," Dean says hoarsely. Damn, she's good. Her breath (spearmint) ghosts over his ear as she leans in, toys with his tie. "We get around."

She chuckles throatily. "Hmm, I bet."

The next time Dean can look away, he sees Sam being accosted by an equally fetching blonde, who's wearing a white lace teddy and giving his brother the time of his life. Sam looks thunderstruck, and it takes Dean a second or two to realize it's probably because the girl looks more than a little something like Jess. Shit. He moves to -- he doesn't know what, because the redhead has wrenched his face back toward her cleavage. "Don't you worry about him, sugar," she purrs. "Amber's got him well in hand."

"I see that," Dean says, muffled by breasts. His fingers twitch against his pant legs, aching all of sudden to touch.

Monica notices, and hums an interested note. "Private dance, sugar?"

"Yes, please," he says, and she stands back, takes him by the hand. He catches Sam's eye; Sam looks happy, sort of. For some reason, though, it's not good enough.

"Can he come too?" Dean has to ask. "And his, uh, girl. Double dance." He grins at the redhead, turns up the charm.

"Sure thing, hon. Amber?" she calls. "Room three, baby, and bring the stallion."

Sam blushes and, god knows why but when he looks at Dean, Dean winks.

*

Room three is done in burnished gold, and the client chairs are set staggered and facing one another, turned slightly inward for a three-quarter profile. This seems odd to Dean, but he's not given any time to analyze it before Monica leads him to one of the chairs and shoves him down. Quick as a whip she straddles him, and grinds into him through his cheap suit trousers until he's gasping.

He can see her just fine, but he can also see Sam just over her right shoulder. The blonde has Sammy's tie undone, and is hauling him by the neck into a brutal kiss. His fingers clutch tentatively at her hips, as though he's afraid he'll break her. The expression on his face is both transcendent and shattered. It rocks Dean to the core.

Something must show on his own face because the redhead kisses him tenderly, stroking behind his ear, leaving him a perfect view. "Aren't they beautiful?" she murmurs, her lips damp against his jaw, the weight of her so delicious he groans. She leans back, hands him a shot from the bottle he bought, and he takes it watching her bite her lip with a backdrop of Sam's taut throat working on his own splash of liquor. The shot glasses clink away.

Dean wrenches his gaze more fully to Monica's, his hands gripping tight on her hips. "We're not --" he begins hoarsely, but she shushes him with a thin finger.

"It doesn't matter what you are, or aren't," she says, shifting closer on him and going to work on the buttons of his shirt. "In here, nothing matters but how you feel."

Behind her, Sam groans. Dean looks, can't help but look, and sees the blonde on her knees, her head bobbing over his brother's lap.

His cock pulses, the warm pressure of the girl on his lap just making it that much better. Monica smirks down at him. "Feels good," she purrs, pulling his shirt untucked. She slides it off his shoulders, undoes each wrist and graces it with a kiss. "So good."

Dean takes the initiative and whips off his undershirt, pressing her to his bandaged skin. The lace she's wearing is deceptively soft. She runs her fingertips over the bandages, more empathy than pity or questions in her eyes. He smirks at her, and pulls her closer. His ribs don't hurt; he's approaching numb already with the decent amount of liquor sloshing in his gut, with the promise of more on the way. He mouths up the line of Monica's neck and steadfastly ignores the moans issuing from across the room.

Only then he can't -- Monica slides down to her knees, revealing Sam with his fingers buried in blonde hair, his head tipped back, eyes closed, lips parted. His shirt is open at the neck, and sweat glistens at the hollow of his throat.

Dean should be looking at the blonde's perky ass, not his brother's hips working sinuously as she swallows him down. He should be looking down at his own girl, who draws down his zipper in one easy slide and lets him spring free with an appreciative purr. He should close his eyes when he takes the shot she hands him as she's stroking his cock up and down, instead of toasting the openly hungry look Sam flashes his way --

He shoots the liquor, lets the glass clink to the floor, and moans as his cock disappears down Monica's throat.

She lets him fuck her mouth but he's gentle, not wanting to hurt her, or lose himself too soon. Wet heat envelops him, prickles across the nerves in his skin, and Monica sucks him expertly; Dean is rock hard but he isn't watching her at all. The blonde is doing something to Sam that has him arching off the chair, and Dean's dirty mind feeds him one slender digit pumping in and out of a lube-slick, tight little hole.

"Oh, fuck," he mutters, and hauls Monica upwards. Thumb beneath her chin as she licks her lips, he asks roughly, "What can I do to you?"

Across the room, Sam whimpers.

The redhead tilts her head appraisingly. "You clean, sugar?"

Dean smirks. "As the day I was born. "

"Because I won't lie," she continues, kohl-lined gaze serious, "you're a looker, and you seem a little. .." Clever fingers tease up his shaft. "...frustrated."

"I don't usually pay for it," he says, but something of indignance and pride flashes across her face.

"I ain't charging," she says, gripping him tighter, almost vindictive. He grunts, and nods.

He can hear Sam getting hotter, heavier of breath, and chances a glance -- and his balls draw up, he almost comes right there because when did _that_ happen? The blonde is riding his brother. He can see the, holy fuck, the ruddy thickness of Sam's cock sliding in and out of her, the way it glistens with her juices as she works herself up and down. Sam is panting, issuing these soft little grunts. Every one of them travels straight down Dean's spine. 

Dean's eyes snap back to Monica's. "You wanna get fucked?" He growls at her, and her pupils dilate.

"Oh, hell yes, sugar," she breathes, and draws him down to the floor. He's somehow got the presence of mind to pull out his wallet, and fumble on a condom. He hopes Sammy remembered, or even had one -- this shit is seriously, pardon the pun, fucking spontaneous.

Monica on her hands and knees when he positions himself and slides in with a grateful noise, her pussy tight and wet as a dream around him. Dean ramps right up into a punishing rhythm and she seems to love it, squealing and shoving right back, matching his frenzied pace with hot slaps of skin on skin that are just plain dirty. Dean wants to look over at Sam, but he doesn't dare. It feels like that might be crossing the line somehow, as though none of the rest of this has.

He can feel a set of eyes on him, though, like the heat of a spotlight up on a stage. He puts a little more effort into his performance, gripping Monica's hips and pulling her up, sliding one hand down the center of her back and pressing her tits to the floor. He pistons his hips, punching deeper, til the girl's nails are scrabbling in the carpet and she's wailing her pleasure into it, tossing her head from side to side. She's honestly enjoying this, the way he's impaling her, and something about the way she clenches down on him flirts with the liquor running rampant through his veins. It feels fucking amazing.

"Yeah," Sam groans, sounding completely wrecked, "it does, _Dean_ \--" and his name is a wanton mewl from his brother's throat. Dean hadn't realized he said anything out loud, but it doesn't matter, not when he's panting and so close to coming just from the way Sam said his _name._

Something animalistic, keening and wild, tears itself from his brother's throat then, and Dean knows that's the sound of Sam coming his brains out, and fuck if he doesn't pack it in and shake, sputter his way to the stars himself on a moan that shudders out through his fingers and toes.

The girl hasn't come yet, and Dean would be embarrassed if he didn't know exactly how to fix that. Ignoring the flop of his softening dick when he slips out of her, he turns her deftly so she's sprawled on her back. Her startled "What are you --" becomes a breathy, gratified "ohhh" when his tongue flicks out to catch her clit, swipe around it and plunge down into her folds. He ignores the chemical taste of lube, pursuing the fresh flooding taste of girl when a new wave of slick pulses out of her. Dean hums how good she is into her flesh and feels her squirm.

"Oh, fuck," he hears Sam breathe somewhere behind him. He hikes up Monica's hips and eats in deeper, like she's the best kind of cherry pie. She's making so much noise, little kitten mews and gasps, but all Dean can hear are his brother's harsh breaths, his bitten-off moans as he watches.

Dean gathers Monica's clit between his lips and suckles, soft at first, then harder as she begs him to. She's almost there, she says, writhing in his grasp.

Large, strong hands grip Dean's hair in handfuls, shove him deeper into the mess of her cunt and when he groans, she arches back and comes like a geyser down his throat, all over his face. She whimpers through the aftershocks when he swipes each one into overdrive. He takes her well past the point of oversensitive, but only because he is hyper-focused on Sam's fingers still clutched in his hair.

They all come back to themselves in a loose, sprawled pile there on the rug. Dean smiles blearily up at Monica, whose mascara runs as she wipes off his face with a warm towel and smiles back. Beside him, Sam toys with the blonde's hair, the fingers of his other hand absently stroking Dean's neck. 

Maybe it was the alcohol, but that was the best time Dean's had in awhile, and it doesn't feel weird at all.

When Monica says, a little shakily, "Thank you, sugar," Dean kisses her more tenderly than he might have ever kissed anyone. She doesn't even wrinkle her nose like other girls have when he reeks of pussy. She just kisses him back, and the two girls slip out a back door.

Dean and Sam don't leave the room until they're sure they can walk, and Dean thinks he's good to drive. He's not complaining when his brother leans too closely the whole ride back to the room.

*

Dean knows they passed out in separate beds. He knows, because he had to lift Sam's monster legs up off the floor when his brother just sort of knelt by the bed, flopped face-first on the mattress, and began to snore. Dean arranged him semi-comfortably before falling toward his own bed and into his own stupor.

Now, though, it's morning, and Dean is too hot because there is a Sasquatch wrapping him much too tightly in octopus limbs. "Sam," Dean says, his voice strained, because damn if his brother doesn't have a kung-fu grip. "Sammy!"

Sam just kind of snuffles, and snuggles in closer.

Oh, hell no. No matter what may have transpired between them the night before -- Dean's nethers give a pleasant little tingle when he remembers, what parts he does remember -- Dean Winchester does not cuddle. Or, well, he doesn't cuddle with his furnace of a brother on a morning when they should be studiously avoiding one another instead.

So he wriggles, trying to displace Sam that way, and the wriggles turn into bucking when he can't get loose. He's making these sort of frustrated noises, somewhere between whines and grunts, and so it takes him awhile to register the quicker rise of Sam's chest, the speeding race of his heartbeat.

Until Sam flails awake, all at once shoving him away and pulling him closer. "Dean," he says, strangled, urgent, and Dean doesn't get it until he stops moving and feels the reason. The very alert, very hard reason, digging into his thigh.

"Oh, shit," he mutters, and propels himself backward off the bed. Again. His ribs twinge, mocking him.

He can hear Sam panting quietly above him. "Dean," he says, and Dean doesn't want to deal with it.

"Don't start," he warns, and starts struggling out of the mess of blankets.

"But --" "I said no, Sam."

"But I'm _warm!_ " comes the frustrated rush, and Dean stops. 

Stops, and thinks, because despite what might either be a hangover or a defensive headache, he does realize the significance.

"When was the last time you were cold?" he asks, curious.

He can _hear_ the flush pinking Sam's cheeks. "Yesterday, before the... uh." 

Uh is right. Dean might be blushing, himself.

"And," Sam says in his thoughtful voice, "the last time I, er, shared a bed with you. I wasn't cold then, either."

Now Dean _knows_ he's flushing scarlet. "What do you think it means?" he asks carefully, picking at the carpet. 

Sam is silent.

Dean really doesn't want to press the issue, but some masochistic part of him tentatively asks, "Sammy?"

"Maybe I just need to share a bed with _somebody_ ," Sam mumbles. 

Not necessarily Dean. The wave of relief gusts out in a happier sigh. "We can make that happen," Dean promises. "We'll find somebody."

The silence emanating from the bed now seems discontented, but Dean is too busy latching on to a potential solution to notice that he cares.

*

The silence lasts until midway through lunch, where Sam goes from picking at his leafy greens to blurting, "Where d'you expect to find somebody who can even know what we do, much less not judge us for it?"

Dean looks up from his burger, eyes wide.

Sam reads him like a headline. "Hookers and hunters don't cuddle, Dean."

In all honesty, Dean doesn't want to have this conversation. Sure, he wasn't thrilled waking up to his baby brother's morning surprise, but he's much less thrilled about the idea of adding a third wheel to their equation. Any third wheel. It's not for strictly selfish reasons, either -- anyone with an affiliation to the Winchesters has the obnoxious and saddening habit of ending up dead.

Still, if he's being _completely_ honest with himself -- a practice Dean tries to avoid whenever he's sober -- the fact is that Dean has been noticing things. Unsettling things. Things about Sam; or rather, observations made about Sam that in turn say things about Dean that maybe Dean isn't all too interested in coming to grips with. Ever. 

Fact of the matter is, though he'd rather gouge out an eye than say it aloud, he and his brother could probably use a third wheel.

So, rather than give any of the morass of thoughts in his head any real consideration, Dean blurts, "I dunno, Sammy, some chicks are just hardwired to snuggle."

Their waitress, a thirty-something with hair in shades of bottle red, appears at that exact moment to pour them refills. When she doesn't give him the stink-eye, Dean turns up the charm and asks her, "How about you, sweetheart? Are you a snuggler?"

She shrugs. "I can take it or leave it. You boys need anything else?"

It's pretty blatantly _not_ a come-on, but Dean has all the subtlety of a rock and sometimes, the grace to match. "How about a few hours of your time tonight?" 

This time she does give him the stink-eye, and snorts as she walks away.

Sam _tches_ in false sympathy. "Too bad, man," he says. "She looked super comfy." 

"How 'bout you shut the fuck up," Dean grumbles. "It's your little problem I'm tryna solve."

"Yeah?" Sam says. "Well so far, your solutions kinda suck."

"Don't see you comin' up with anything better!"

Sam is noticeably, ominously silent. His shoulders jump with shivers, but he's so tense they're little more than the barest of vibrations.

Dean arches an eyebrow at him. "What?"

A shake of Sam's head, and some more vicious stabbing of lettuce, are all he gets in reply.

*

The Tasmanian devil case is turning out to be much less fun than Dean hoped.

That might be, in large part, because Sam is still mad at him.

Three days, a lot more large-scale destruction, and Dean is about ready to tear his hair out. Sam has barely moved from his seat at the room's dinky table, wrapped as he is in all his long sleeve shirts and both their jackets and his bed's ratty comforter. He looks drawn, miserable, but determined, and had steadfastly refused to speak to Dean regarding anything other than the hunt.

The one time Dean exploded -- "well maybe Taz wants to fucking cuddle!" -- Sam didn't even dignify that with a glance.

So Dean goes out and interviews witness after useless witness. He's getting sick of his FBI suit, of his alias, of freaking Texas. Sure, it's the middle of January, but it's _hot._ Where is a Midwestern breeze when you need one? Oh, right -- they all got hanged at the border. 

At least with all this forced socialization, he's got no time to think.

"And what did it look like?" he asks Witness #46, a scrawny, birdlike woman with ombre eyes and wisps of cotton-blue hair. She peers up at him through oval lenses, holds her wrapped shawl tighter. Dean is sweating through his suit, and trying to smile. He probably just looks like he's constipated.

"It was a blur," she said, like so many before her, "but I would swear it had these scrawny little arms, you know. Chest like a bulldog, slobbery tongue just flopping around -- did you ever see those old cartoons?"

"Yes, ma'am," Dean says, the very portrait of patience, "but are you absolutely sure?"

"Young man," she began frostily, drawing herself up to her full height (Dean estimated around 4'9", if he was being generous) but at that moment his phone yammered out the opening chords of Smoke on the Water. _Sam._

"Excuse me, ma'am, this is my partner calling," Dean says quickly, and scoots out closer to the car to take the call. "Sammy! Glad to hear from you, man, what's up?"

"Dean?" Sam sounds like he's in a subway tunnel, standing next to a train. Which might make sense if they were in, say, New York. "Dean, where are you?"

"I'm out doing an interview -- Sam, what the fuck is that noise?" Dean finds himself yelling to compensate. He's sure the whole block can hear him.

"You know how the damage to the houses looks like tornado damage?" Sam says, so much background interference that the speaker crackles around his voice.

"Yeah?"

"You better get back here. You are not gonna believe -- holy shit!"

The line goes dead. Dean's staring holes into Witness #46's hedge. "Sam? _Sammy!_ " 

He's in the car and gunning the engine before he even registers having moved his feet.

*

As he drives, reckless even by his standards, Dean cranes his neck to look at the sky. A nasty gray like a storm rolling in seems to circle about ten miles east -- the same direction and location of their motel. Dean's heart is pounding out of his chest. It's like driving to Jefferson City all over again. Worse, because this time he's anticipating the tragedy. Worse still, because it's Sammy in trouble, and a twister is a hell of a lot harder to shoot than a demon.

The flat, endless sprawl of suburbia prevents him from seeing what's happening until he's in the thick of it. One minute he's in the middle of Stepford, the next a wall of rust has risen up to devour the road, and all visibility. Dust clouds, kicked up nearly impenetrable, and within them so many panicking people. They scurry out of nowhere, shouting, stumbling, wild eyes rolling and not paying any attention to where they're putting their feet. Dean slams on the brakes, cursing. He's not getting Baby anywhere in this. 

Loath to go on foot, though, he inches her down the street. Luckily for him, she's big enough and black enough to be visible through the grit, loud enough to cut through the cacophony of panic when he revs her like a thug. Most people see her in enough time to avoid her. Those who don't, well, he's driving at a crawl. They'll survive.

Closer in to the heart of things, the damage already seems to have been done. Dean gapes at whole buildings reduced to timber and cinder-block rubble. Too many power lines are down, snapping dangerously across what asphalt isn't cracked or strewn with refuse, cars and light poles twisted into nearly unrecognizable wreckage. And bodies, too many bodies, scattered across the streets and stripped bushes and piles of debris.

Dean swallows his heart and keeps driving. Just three more blocks to the --

To where the motel _used_ to be. 

There's nothing, not for far too wide a space. Even the foundations are cracked and uprooted. There's far too little debris in the piles, which means the majority of it must have been carried off. If he weren't too busy panicking, Dean might be looking for a wayward cow. But this isn't the movies.

His brother is _gone_ . 

Dean's heart clutches, beats spasmodically through his denial. Sam's fine. He has to be. He made it to a basement, he tied himself to a sturdy oak, something. Sam's resourceful, Dean tells himself, fingernails digging into his palm as he clenches his fist against useless thoughts. Sam's fine. He's gotta be fine.

Because the darker truth of it is, there's nothing for him here if Sam is gone. Not just in Texas, but anywhere, in any aspect. Dean doesn't, _can't_ exist without Sam. 

He just _can't_ . 

It's so hard to breathe, and Dean knows as he struggles for air that it has nothing to do with the dust.

He tries Sam's cell out of habit, numb with fear. It goes straight to voicemail. Dean parks alongside what may have once been a curb and climbs out, grit stinging his eyes. From the direction and relative calm of the wind, he can tell whatever this was -- storm is not in any case an apt descriptor -- is moving on. North, from the feel of it. And it carried Sam with it.

He stares, for awhile, at the empty space where he last saw his brother. Listens to the faint cries of people running for cover, the howl of the unnatural wind. The crack and crash of a vibrant town, now so much rubble and dust. He feels the emptiness, the fear, resounding within his chest until it threatens to crack him wide open.

Then his phone rings, sounding canned against the backdrop of destruction. Dean answers it hoarsely, without looking at the ID.

"H'lo?"

"Dean?"

He nearly falls to his knees. "Sam, thank fuck, where are you?"

"I'm at a payphone in -- excuse me?" He hears his brother inquire. "Where are we?" Several people speak at once, just a crackle of disjointed noise over the line. Dean can hear the different notes of their voices, fear and confusion, gallows humor.

Sam's incredulous laugh is one of the most beautiful things he's ever heard.

"Dean, I'm in Sweetwater."

Three hundred miles away.

*

The drive north is harrowing. It's a good thing Dean has never willingly taken the interstate anywhere, because it's been shredded so thoroughly in some areas that to try and mount it (even in a car that isn't Baby's two tons of beautiful American steel) would be suicide. The back roads are still bad, littered with broken asphalt, timber, and bodies beginning to bloat in the reemerging sun. Dean sends up mindless thanks that Sam isn't one of them.

_"Are you sure you're fine?" he asks his brother, still somewhat numb but reeling with relief._

_"I'm fine, Dean," Sam crackles at him down the line. "When it happened, I was wearing six layers of clothes and both our blankets. I'm only a little bruised."_

_"Are you --" Dean's voice cracks. He coughs. "Are you warm?"_

_"Warm enough," Sam answers lightly. Dean doesn't believe him for a second. "Look, just -- I gotta get off of this, other people need to use it, but just follow the storm's path North and when you get to the neon lady, turn right. I'm at the gas station."_

_"The neon lady," Dean says flatly._

_"Trust me," Sam says. "She's the tallest thing for miles. Hey, Dean?"_

_His brother suddenly sounds years younger._

_"Yeah, Sammy?"_

_"Be careful."_

_Dean huffs a laugh into the phone. "Promise."_

_He's not surprised to feel his jaw aching from a wide smile when he hangs up, but then he notices the phone comes away wet. Tentative fingertips find wetness on his cheeks. He flicks droplets away with a breathless scoff._

_Goddamn. Sammy's alive._

_The grin spreads wider, Dean's breath hitching on a happy little sigh as he flings open the Impala's door, slides in and fires her up._

Two hours into the drive and Dean is beyond antsy. He's had to slow to a crawl too many times, avoiding all manner of nasty and sometimes unidentifiable debris. Miles back, something got hung up on Baby's undercarriage, and Dean hopped out only to find an entire severed leg still clad in shredded khakis.

He drives well below the speed limit, hands at ten and two, and avoids any suspicious lumps in the road like the plague.

He wishes he could talk to Sam again. He wants to know if the kid found out anything new about this thing they're hunting before it swept him up; but more than that, he won't really believe his brother is okay until he can hold him at arms length and see for himself. He's tried the number for that payphone several times, but it always blares a busy signal. Too many refugees, all of them wanting to reassure loved ones and themselves of each others' survival.

Unbidden, Dean's memory flashes back to that night at the club. To Sam, loose-limbed and languid, sated and smiling at him across the carpet. To Sam just minutes before that, hips rolling beneath the girl's lithe weight, breathing harsh and on the brink. The sound of those breaths echo in Dean's ears like Sam is just then getting off in the passenger seat. He finds his own speeding up to match. 

He shakes his head, gulps in a thick breath of recirculated air, and tries to calm the fuck down. This is not the way the world works. Getting off in the same room as your brother is a little depraved, sure, but it was all in good fun, in the heat of the evening. Dwelling on it, on him, after the fact and sober is another thing entirely. Dean doesn't want to think about it, because if he does, it hurts his head, his heart, and other sensitive areas.

The silence becomes a tangible thing, just the unsteady rumble of wheels over grit and rubble, and Dean realizes he's been driving all this time without music on. He fumbles for the tape box, but never quite makes it to pulling one out. His mind has decided to stick on something else, without his consent.

It flickers in flashes too quick to latch on to: Sam cold, Sam with him, Sam warm. _Sam._ The boy become a young man, and he's no longer something Dean can understand like an engine, or a gun. Not something he can take apart and analyze. He thought he understood Sam as a kid, but after three years of separation followed by countless tragedies, he's beginning to wonder if he ever really did. 

He wonders why it suddenly matters so much.

*

Nine hours. It takes him nine hours to get to Sweetwater, a trip that under normal conditions would only take him around four and a half. It's dark out by the time he sees what Sam was talking about, and she looms up out of the night like a neon Madonna welcoming her lost child. She reminds Dean of Vegas, and hookers. He turns right when he's close enough to count the rivets between her legs.

The gas station, being the only one still standing and the only lit building on the block, is thronged with people. They all look distressed and disheveled, and Dean pulls in as close as he can, craning his neck. He'd hoped Sam would hear the unmistakable purr of the engine and come running -- hell, maybe Dean did have a brief Lifetime movie fantasy involving tearful hugs -- but after awhile he has to pull away and park.

The night is a little chilly. Dean tugs up the collar on his jacket, and hopes Sam is sequestered somewhere warm.

He walks over to the first little clump of people, who are still noticing him as the owner of a working ticket out of here. Dean has to remind himself that he proofed Baby against hotwiring ages ago and all he really has to worry about is carjacking which frankly, these skinny fucks would be stupid to try on him.

This really is a gun in his pocket. He's not that happy to see them.

"'Scuse me, any of ya'll seen my brother: six two-ish, floppy brown hair? Wearing more coats than an Alaskan hobo?"

From somewhere beyond this dead-eyed first group comes a female voice. "You mean Sam?"

"Yes!" Dean calls, pushing his way over to her. She's a slight young thing with tangled brown hair and worried eyes. When he reaches her, she says, "I'll take you to him," and turns toward the gas station proper.

That's not ominous at all. Dean fights to keep his breathing regular.

Inside, the clerk greets them, moving his hand none too subtly away from the shotgun on the counter. "Heya, Lucy." He's somewhere over sixty, bald and wrinkled, with a tough-as-nails but kindly air. Dean might like him if there were room inside him for anything but _Sammy where is Sammy please be okay fucking please_ _Sammy please_ _be okay._

"Who ya got there?"

"This is Sam's brother," Lucy tells him.

The old man is instantly somber. Dean's heart lurches. "Go on back," the man says.

Lucy leads Dean through the door beside the counter, through a storeroom that smells faintly of onions. It's neat, but somewhat depleted, half the boxes broken down and stacked against the far wall.

There's another door, smaller, and when Lucy unlocks it they step through into the front hall of a house. The gas station must have been built right on top of it, or the house extended as a shelter for the attendant's family. It's dark, the halls and doorways narrow, but it feels lived in. Homey.

Dean barely notices any of it.

Toward the back of the house, Lucy stops outside a closed bedroom door. "Before we go in," she says, and Dean wants to push past her, to shock himself with whatever it is. He forces himself to wait, fists clenched, and listens.

"Does your brother have --" she breaks off, searching for the right words. "Is he sick?"

"No, he," Dean sounds strangled, "It's just this thing. He's cold all the time."

She looks at him like, _that can't be all this is._

His shoulders jump in a little fitful shrug. "Really cold."

Lucy purses her lips. Maybe she has an opinion, but she keeps it to herself and eases the door open. The hinges creak mournfully. Dean peers inside. 

At first, there's nothing to see. Darkness, thick in that way that closed rooms get with no fresh air flow. Stagnant. Dean catches a whiff of something he'd know anywhere, though, and pushes the door open wider. Pulls out his lighter, flicks it open.

By the light of the flame, a bed materializes in the gloom, three bodies on it. Two of them stir, dark heads lifting to regard him with glittering, distrustful eyes. The third, in the middle, is covered head to toe and doesn't stir. Dean is guessing that's Sam.

"What happened?" he says, too loudly.

"Who the hell are you?" rasps an older female voice from the bed.

"Sam's brother," Lucy interjects, before Dean can let loose whatever stupid, scathing remark is on the tip of his tongue. "Let him see."

The woman unfolds herself from the covers, arms around her chest as Dean steps forward, plants one knee on the mattress and reaches over. Even at that distance he can tell the air there is colder than it should be, and movement catches the corner of his eye.

The woman is shivering.

Gently, Dean pulls the covers back from Sam's face. The Zippo is getting hot in his hand, but he doesn't care. He has to see.

"Jesus Christ," he breathes. Sam looks so pale in the flickering orange light. Dean can't quite tell but he'd swear his brother's lips are blue. Sam's chest barely rises with each slight breath, and Dean is struck dumb to see a little puff of steam on each exhale. Like the air itself were chilled.

"How long has he been like this?" Dean asks weakly, tucking the blankets in tight around Sam's shoulder.

It's the third girl, the one on Sam's other side, who speaks. "We don't really know. One of the other refugees found him curled up around the side. His shirt was damp, so at first we thought --"

"His shirt?" Dean interrupts. "What happened to his jackets? I talked to him nine hours ago, he said he was wearing six jackets."

The women are silent. Dean feels his ire rising. "Well?" he asks, thunder on the horizon.

Then Lucy says, very quietly, "I was wondering where Annabelle got that jacket."

Dean whips around and pins her with a stare in the guttering flame. She squares her shoulders and meets it. "Annabelle is six years old, and no one has seen her parents since the storm. Earlier she was wearing a green jacket, looked like Army surplus."

That was one of Dean's. Sam was wearing it over two of his plaid shirts.

"You idiot," he whispers, faint and fondly, turning back to his brother's face. "You gave them all away?"

He imagined he could hear Sammy snort. _Of course, Dean. I was fine._

_You're not fine now_ , Dean thinks in reply. He finally closes the Zippo, wincing a little when it sears his finger. He tucks it into an inside pocket, feels it like a little brand against his chest. 

"You ladies can consider yourselves relieved of duty," he says without looking at any of them. His eyes are tracing Sam's profile as it fades into view, his eyes becoming accustomed to the darkness. "I got this."

The girl in the bed slides out, and the three of them pad to the door. "Let us know if you need anything," Lucy says, distantly.

All Dean needs is the eyelid he's currently tracing with his fingertip to flutter, and open.

_Come on, Sammy_ , he says inwardly, sliding beneath the covers and drawing his brother's chilled frame into his arms. _Warm up._

_Warm up._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, if you're interested, if you liked it so far, please let me know. I really appreciate reader feedback. Hopefully, the next chapter will be up in the same amount of time as this one.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for your comments! I love feedback. It's what gets me through a tough workweek and motivated to finish a (*cough* overdue) chapter. 
> 
> You may notice that the chapter limit has gone up. (Sorry?) More decided to happen than could be contained in three chapters. I'm hoping to have it capped at five, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see...

There's no telling how long Dean's slept when the shifting of the body beside him startles him awake. He's sitting up and leaning over Sam before his eyes are properly open. "Sammy? You with me?"

"Dean?" Sam's voice is thin, hoarse from sleep, but it's him. He's awake. Dean could howl for joy.

Instead he leans in further, and finds Sam's eyes in the dim light. It must be morning. The dawn is filtering in from behind thick curtains, making everything surreal. Sam is a specter swallowed by blankets, his hair spread out on the pillow like a stringy halo. He's beautiful.

"Hey," Dean says, grinning down at his brother. His eyes feel prickly. Must be dusty in here.

"Hey," Sam replies, smiling weakly back. "Bout time you got here."

Before Dean can kickstart his brain and find a retort for that, Sam shudders massively and clutches at the blankets. "W-where are we?" he asks, teeth clenched to keep them from chattering.

Some instinct has Dean wanting to haul his brother closer and feed him his own body heat until Sam is sweating and no longer miserable. He masks the urge with a punch to Sam's shoulder. "Sweetwater. Under the _neon lady_ ," he leers. "Man, you didn't tell me she was hot."

"Dean," Sam grouses, rubbing his arm. He turns away and noses into the pillow with a sigh. "Don't be a lech."

Dean snorts, like _when have you known me to be anything but?_ "Savor the warmth while you can, little brother," he says. "We are getting our asses out of here."

"And going where?" Sam's voice is quiet. Too quiet. Dean pauses in the middle of swiveling off the bed to glance at him. Sam's profile against the pillow is drawn. He's tense. "Where can we go," he continues, "that's warm enough?"

The despondency in his voice says, _nowhere_. Dean doesn't want to get dragged down into that. He musters a smile from somewhere, a _buck up, little brother_ smile. Maybe it'll warm Sam up a little. "There's always Argentina."

Sam doesn't even dignify that with a snort. "Dean," he says reproachfully, "you hate flying, and we can't drive to Argentina."

"Says who?" Dean mumbles under his breath. He knows Sam is right. He knows that if January in Texas isn't warm enough, odds are January anywhere in the U.S. isn't warm enough. He thinks briefly, wistfully, of the Florida Keys.

Sam's silent beside him and Dean has no idea what to say. He can feel something dangerously close to despair rolling off his brother in waves, and he wants to _fix it_ , somehow, but can't for the life of him figure out a way. Desperation gnaws around his edges. His whole life has been _Sam_ , and _Dad_ , and _hunting_ , and now that Dad's dead it's just _hunting with Sam_ ; if that's not the solution, what the fuck can he do?

He shifts onto his back, hands folded across his chest, and watches shadows morph along the cracked ceiling as the sunlight intensifies.

It's a long time before Sam moves, or says anything.

When he does, he sounds tired.

"Have you heard from Bobby lately?"

Dean shifts his shoulders against the worn mattress. "Not since," he says, stops and starts. "I could --"

"Yeah," Sam says, a weary grunt, and when he rolls and faces away from Dean, his back is a chilly line up Dean's side.

There's no reason for it, but Dean turns too, and wriggles up behind Sam until their bodies are flush. Sam tenses. "Dean --"

"Keepin' you warm," Dean says, his voice harsh. He rubs a hand briskly up and down Sam's arm, emphatic friction. "I'm callin' Bobby, hang on."

There's a slight problem, though: his phone is in his left pocket, currently digging into his thigh, where he'd inexplicably stuck it despite there being perfectly good back and jacket pockets for that purpose. He has to hitch up his hips and fumble for it, bringing far more of him in contact with Sam's ass than he'd ever been willing to let do so. His zipper digs into his soft dick through a thin layer of boxer briefs, but the pain isn't enough to disguise the flush of heat that washes in at the contact. Dean doesn't know if it originates from his body or Sam's. He doesn't know if it's even worth it to wonder.

Sam is a good sport about it; that is, he tenses up and doesn't even breathe while Dean fumbles and curses and tries not to move more than is strictly necessary. Dean fails. By the time he recovers his phone and hits the speed dial, Sam is trembling finely. No telling if it's because of the cold.

The moment Bobby picks up, he begins with a gusting sigh, and Dean knows there will be trial by fire (or more like _ice_ ) before Bobby even says, "I got good news, and I got bad news."

"Hit me," Dean growls. Against him, Sam goes still. Listening.

"There's a guy I got ahold of who might be able to help. Specializes in supernatural afflictions, sort of a... doctor, for our kind." Bobby's voice still sounds heavy, and Dean is guessing the bad news before the old hunter even continues. "Bad news is, his practice is in Washington State, and he don't travel."

Sam hunches into more of a ball, driving his lower back into Dean. Dean's nostrils flare. His grip on the phone tightens with an audible creak. When he speaks, he sounds kind of strained. "Not even for emergencies?"

"I tried to explain it to 'im, all he said was it'd be better for you to go up there." Bobby sounds repentant. "That's the best I could find, boy, I'm sor--"

Dean cuts him off, "Thanks, Bobby, we'll be in touch," and snaps the phone shut. He shoves the hand holding it under the sheets, and lets it dangle over his brother's side, holding Sam without (he hopes) being obvious about it. For a long moment, Dean just focuses on the steady rise and fall of Sam's breath.

"I can't go to Washington." Freaky hearing the kid's got, and some kind of ESP, because there he goes speaking Dean's own fears. Dean draws a breath to deny, argue, anything, but Sam beats him to it. "No, Dean. There isn't -- there aren't enough jackets in the world to keep me warm, and you know it."

"But when we get there, you'll be warm again!" Dean protests. "Can't we, I dunno, can't we stuff your clothes full of those pocket warmers or some shit? Rub you down with --"

"Dude, seriously," Sam interrupts wearily, "I don't think there's any way to keep me warm enough, long enough." _I probably wouldn't survive_ , lingers the unspoken passenger, and that is completely unacceptable.

Somewhere in the back of Dean's mind, an idea is forming. Still in its gestational stages, it taunts him with flickers of near-understanding.

He rolls over slowly to place his phone on the night stand with a clack, ignoring the tightness of his ribs and a deeper taut sensation in his chest that he'd rather not try to define. When he straightens out, the idea has birthed itself, and Dean takes a breath that absolutely does not shudder on its way in.

Casually, he works his hand around Sam's waist again and lets it dangle, loose and unassuming. Propped up on his elbow the way he is, he's got a perfect view of Sam's profile, the way Sam's nostrils flare a little, teeth tugging on his lower lip. Dean moves his hips in a little closer to Sam's ass, slotting there in a way that's almost too perfect.

 _It's morning_ , his body tells him brightly. _It's morning and there's something we're meant to be doing. Something awesome_. His dick gives a helpful little twitch to remind him. Feeling Sam's bulk right there, his hips follow through with a roll, unconscious and smooth and so good. He has to bite his lip on a noise that threatens to escape.

"Dean?" Sam asks carefully, the familiar word resonating through his back into Dean's chest. Sam is so tense. He really should relax a little. "What are you doing?" he asks.

Dean is not second-guessing himself, not right now. "Warming you up," he says roughly, his hips rolling again, meeting the warmth of Sam and agreeing with the motion wholeheartedly. Dean knows he's in trouble when his body feels like it's a separate entity, playing for its own endgame, but the thing about trouble like this is: he enjoys it way too much to try and stop it from happening. Much more fun to let it play out. Dean's hand splays over Sam's belly, feeling the tense play of abdominals through the thin fabric of Sam's shirt, the smoothness of skin just begging to be touched.

His brother is still so cold.

The way Sam's hair falls reveals a perfect swatch of that golden juncture between his neck and his shoulder, and that's where Dean leans over and buries his face, inhaling the sleep-dirtied scent of his brother, rolling their bodies together again. This time, Sam twitches against him violently. His heartbeat is thunder everywhere Dean touches.

"Dean," Sam whispers.

"Gonna warm you up, Sammy," Dean murmurs into his skin.

Truth be told, he doesn't have a plan. He's pretty intensely _not_ thinking further than five seconds ahead. He just knows -- has correlated -- that every time they come into uncomfortable contact, something like this, Sam feels warm. Ipso facto --

Dean hauls his brother in tight as he can against him, and settles into a lightly rolling rhythm, his swelling cock riding right up the crack of Sam's ass in those threadbare jeans. Sam's breathing has picked up, hips twitching steadily. Dean can feel the bolt of Sam's jaw working against his forehead, and doesn't really make a conscious decision when he mouths at the skin he's breathing against. Sam tastes like salt and skin when Dean's tongue flicks out, and doesn't gasp so much as inhale more deeply, lungs filling steadily to strain his chest against Dean's arm. A lifetime of them sharing small spaces has ingrained silence, a lack of reaction, which in any other circumstance might be commendable, but Dean needs to _know_.

There's a sure way to tell if this is working -- okay, two sure ways, but Dean doesn't trust his voice right now, so he worms his hand down between Sam's thighs.

He's hard. Huge, and hard; oh, goody. Dean's brain goes blessedly blank, and he whispers Sam's name into his skin.

Sam heaves in a wet gasp. His exhale is a bitten moan, _unh_ , hotter than it should be even though that was sort of the point. His hips shove forward, fuck into Dean's hand, and back into the bulge in Dean's own jeans in a jerking motion that traps Dean's cock between hot and hotter.

All that's running through Dean's mind is _clothes - off - now_ , but even with all that's happening he seriously doubts that's okay. Brothers, after all, despite their situation, despite the way it's always been, despite the way they've grown closer through this unnatural circumstance --

Then Sam fumbles around Dean's wrist, and his jeans are suddenly looser. _Button undone,_ Dean's mind helpfully supplies. Well, alrighty then.

Dean finds his brother's zipper and drags it down, needing more than air to feel the smooth length of him. He fairly tears Sam's briefs down with the denim, Sam wriggling his hips to help, and Dean gropes at hot, hard flesh. His fingers find more than they bargained for, God _damn_ , he's big, and Dean's never had a head for mathematics but he's sure this is out of proportion. Some kind of Grecian deity in the circle of his fingers right now, not the scrawny kid he practically raised. Not Sammy.

Dean's never held another dick before and he finds himself exploring. The skin feels the same as his, the steely heat beneath it, but Sam is thinner than he is and way, way longer. It curves to the left, just a little. Dean wishes he could see it. _Porn star cock_ , Dean tells himself and grins, grappling for the sensitive spot beneath the head that always gets him going. Sam wriggles, Dean's fingers slip, and when one of them digs roughly into the slit there's a grunt that echoes through his own chest and a blurt of precome over his fingers, warm and sticky.

Dean thinks about licking it off. He wonders if it would taste the same as his own. He wonders when this became a thing for him, the very thought of Sam's precome on his lips sending a thrill down into his own cock. A tacky little wet spot forms in his briefs.

He must make some kind of noise, because Sam laughs like he's out of breath.

"You like that?" Sam husks, and oh yes, Dean's thinking he likes that very much. He's thinking that if he doesn't get his own pants down to his knees so he can feel Sam's ass against his cock in the next five seconds, he might just die. He's got no room to wonder about the urge as it swamps him, overwhelms him down to pinpoints of need.

Reluctant to let go of Sammy's monster cock, Dean has to work his other hand between them, shoving his shoulder into the bed. Mattress springs groan, and his grip involuntarily tightens around Sam, who groans just as loud. "Dean..."

Pants were invented by Satan himself and have never been so difficult to figure out. Dean shimmies, knocking his hips against Sam's ass again and again and each time, he gets a little more skin-on-skin contact. He refuses to let go of Sam's cock, not when his awkward movements seem to be turning the kid on so fast Dean can feel the temperature rising by tens of degrees. Each little twitch drags them further down this road, and hauls another delicious, bitten-off noise out of Sam. He's biting off Dean's name, little begging whines, deep keens that seem to dredge up from his core.

Then cloth bunches down far enough, Dean's cock fits itself flush between Sam's cheeks, and they both gasp in tandem. Oh fuck, Dean bites his lip, because the heat is astounding and oh so welcome. He can feel Sam clenching around him. Every twitch is monumental. He tightens his grip on Sam's cock and Sam bucks back into him with a whine. Another wave of scent, and heat, washes back across Dean's face.

"Dean," his brother is panting, "Dean, please..." Sam groans.

"Yeah, Sammy, I got you," Dean growls. He turns his head and bites, latching his teeth on that spot of Sam's skin, bucking into the arch of Sam's back when the cock in his hand jumps almost violently, blurting slick across his fingers. He works his wrist so sharply it clicks, jacking Sam with military precision, and it's almost like some weird dis-associative masturbation, a longer, thinner shaft in his hand but the right angle, and it feels _great_. Better than great, Sam's ass providing a perfect hot cavern for Dean to fuck against.

Give him seventy billion guesses and Dean still wouldn't have figured on this being a thing for him, not ever. Go figure, right?

He doesn't notice he's actually rutting into Sam really hard, seeking that heat, until he realizes the hand on Sam's cock has no sheets beneath it. They're almost off the bed on that side. (The old frame is creaking like a hurricane is coming, and how long has _that_ been going on?) Still, Dean doesn't care; how can he, when Sam is mewling and bucking back like a goddamn teenager in his arms. Sweat is rising on Sam's skin and Dean licks it off, one smooth stripe up Sam's neck collecting salt on his tongue.

Sam is begging him, sweet and breathlessly, his cock impossibly hard in Dean's fist. It's almost too easy for Dean to flick his tongue up behind Sam's ear with a wash of hot breath and feel Sam cream himself, violently, all over Dean and the sheets. Some of it probably drips on the floor.

Dean can't slow his hips. The slick of sweat easing the way is too damn much for him to quit now. He feels orgasm approaching like a bullet train on a one-way track, searing up the seam of his balls and down all his nerves at once in tongues of fire. Sam is sensitive, coming down, gasping as Dean keeps kneading him, working come into his skin.

"Dean," he gasps, trying to turn over. His hand bats at Dean's intrusive fingers, but Dean just grunts and keeps fucking forward, holding Sam close.

He's so close to falling over the edge, and not just the edge of the bed. It feels like when this culminates, he'll be forever changed. It's building in his blood with every thrust, every breath gulped into Sam's lungs that shoves him back against Dean's chest. They breathe the same breath. Always have.

"Dean," Sam mutters, wrecked, "come for me. You come for me, babe," and despite how ridiculous that sentiment is, Dean locks up and spurts all up the crack of Sam's ass, staining their jeans and the abused sheets with a drawn-out groan that can probably be heard out front. Hell, they probably heard him in Dallas.

For a long moment after, as he comes back to himself, Dean is afraid to move, letting his hand just rest where it is, his whole body one giant mess. He feels tension building in his brother's frame, and knows he should say something. Anything.

Nervously, he clears his throat.

"Dean," Sam says carefully, wearily, "don't."

His jaw snaps shut. Okay, then.

He gently removes his hand from Sam's junk, rolls over and climbs out of the bed, wiping the mess on the sheets. He hauls his jeans up, his belt buckle clinking out accusations. Sam is still hunched into a ball, hair spread on the pillow, unmoving.

When Dean does speak, it's in the direction of the door. Even to himself, he sounds strangled. "Better get a move on, Sammy, before it wears off." It takes a lot of energy not to sigh. "Got a lot of ground to cover."

He's out the door before he hears Sam's reply. If there is one.

*

While Sam is in the bathroom, Dean thanks the gas station folk for their hospitality, and asks where their washing machine is. Says he'd feel bad leaving without at least cleaning up after them. Least he could do, and all that. He tosses on a helpful smile, not sure if it reaches his eyes. Even less sure if he cares.

Lucy gives him a knowing look, but shows him their laundry room without any extraneous comments. He's grateful for that. God knows how he'd respond if she did.

He's glad his mind is still so blank. In shock, or something, Dean doesn't know. He doesn't even know how he'd respond to himself.

*

"It wasn't the Tasmanian devil," is the first thing Sam says to him, two hours later when they've finally picked their way north and out of the wreckage. Dean glances over at him, all folded into the passenger seat, chewing thoughtfully on his lip.

"Yeah?" he prompts, when silence passes too long. "What was it?"

"Dunno for sure. The locals had this legend..." Sam trails off, staring out the passenger window at the rusty Southern scenery. "I don't think there's any way to stop it. Happens every two hundred years or so. The records were pretty vague, more like tall tales."

"Convenient," Dean mutters, but he's not sure for who.

They get to just east of Phoenix before Sam even twitches toward the heat knob.

It's a victory, but it feels pretty hollow to Dean.

*

Bobby calls as they're pulling in to a motel parking lot on the outskirts of Henderson, NV. Dean parks and gets out; Sam doesn't move, just hitches the hood of his sweatshirt tighter around his face. He looks paler already, circles standing out beneath his eyes.

"Where are you?" Bobby asks. Dean tells him dispassionately.

"Makin' good time."

Dean grunts.

"Somethin' happen?"

 _Oh, I dunno, Bobby_ , Dean thinks. _I jerked my brother off this morning because that sort of thing seems to warm him up, and then he shut down on me and we haven't really spoken since. I'd mention it but, y'know, incest -- and I'm not a friggin' pussy_.

"Nah, just tired. This guy know we're coming?"

"I told him to expect you, yeah." Bobby's pause is thoughtful. "You boys were working that gig in Texas, right?"

Dean grunts an affirmative.

"Wild goose chase?"

"Yeah." Dean squints down the line of the highway, against the glare of tungsten light. The street looks glazed in orange, and fake.

"Yeah..."

Something in Bobby's tone snaps Dean's attention back to the conversation more fully than he had been yet. "Something up?" he asks.

Beside him, Sam opens the door and swings out. Dean can feel his brother's questioning gaze like a searchlight on the side of his face.

"Not really sure," Bobby says, tone still musing. He sounds distracted. Dean can hear papers rustling on the other end, books and things being shifted. "Something about that case don't sit right, but I got no solid clue as to why," Bobby says.

Dean hums thoughtfully. "Sam said it happens every two hundred years."

Hearing his name, Sam wanders closer. If they were in a room, or in the car, Dean would put Bobby on speaker. Out in the open like this, he just motions Sam up to the other side of the phone, pressing in close. Sam's warmer than Dean would have thought he'd be, breath gusting softly against Dean's arm, hair tickling Dean's fingers.

 _Focus_ , Dean tells himself. _Bobby's talking._

"-- enough lore to back it up," the old hunter is saying. "That's weird enough as it is. Something that big? Ought to've been _news_."

Dean frowns. "Should we go back?" he asks, hating himself when he feels Sam tense beside him. As potentially harrowing as this journey North could be, Sam wants to be cured. Dean knows he does. To go back now, when they're halfway there...

"No," Bobby says firmly, and Dean is gratified to feel Sam's bare and soundless sigh of relief. "No, let me do some more digging. You boys go and see Mir and get Sam cured."

"Mere?"

"Mir," Bobby corrects tersely.

"As in...?"

"As in short for Vladimir," Bobby says. Dean's wearing on his patience. "The guy knows a thing or two about spells. And cold."

"So long as he doesn't impale us with anything," Dean mutters. Sam has to launch himself away, snorting with smothered laughter.

"Ha, ha," Bobby says dryly. "I'll be in touch. Idjit," he mutters, and the call disconnects.

Dean meets Sam's eyes as he snaps the phone shut. Sam's lips are pressed together in something that could be humor, but it doesn't reach his eyes. "Come on, Sammy," Dean says, clapping Sam on the shoulder and trying for jovial. "Let's get a room and heat it up, already."

He was honestly just trying to joke around and lighten the situation, but the sudden flare of heat in Sam's gaze as he nods forces Dean to gulp a little, and look away.

Being helpful is one thing, but Dean gets the feeling this whole dimension of their situation is already so much more than that.

*

The room is laughable, for several reasons.

"Why do these places always feel the need for a theme?" Dean mutters. Beside him, Sam slips his duffel off his shoulder and gazes around, amused. "It's like, we know you're stuck in shitty-ass Western nowhere instead of at a real beach, so here, have several million seashells."

Sam huffs, but says nothing. Dean feels obligated to keep trying, joke until Sam has no choice but to laugh.

"Maybe the next one will be desert-themed," he says, mock-wistfully. "I've never seen a live camel."

His brother snorts, moving over to the ancient thermostat and craning it high. "You know they spit?"

"So?" Dean grins. "I spit back."

Sam does laugh then, undoubtedly picturing Dean in a spit war with some mangy Saharan beast. For the moment, Dean is content, and he plunks his ass on the bed to start cleaning his favorite guns.

He's sliding the pin back into his beloved Taurus when he realizes Sam has been still for a long time. Looking up, Dean finds his brother staring into space with an unreadable expression, laptop on the table, still closed.

"Hey," Dean says softly.

Sam looks up, startled, weariness settled in behind his eyes.

"You okay?"

Sam's eyes cut away. "Yeah," he says, but Dean doesn't believe him. Dean opens his mouth to say something about it, but Sam cuts him off. "I am kinda hungry," he says. "You wanna order in?"

"Yeah," Dean says, surprised to realize he's totally on board with that. It's rare that he doesn't feel like hitting a bar the second his ass hits a motel bed. "Pizza, or Chinese?"

"You pick," Sam says offhandedly, and that doesn't really make sense in Dean's brain until it's followed by, "God, I wish they delivered booze, too."

Aha. "Ah," Dean says sagely, speaking over the awkward thump of his heart against his ribcage, "but that's what the trunk stash is for."

Sam's raised eyebrow means he had no clue, which means the two bottles of Jack that Dean stashed in there two months ago are still there. Dean grins. "Order me some General Tso's," he says. "I'll grab the party favors."

His heart is still beating too fast, too hard, but a few shots ought to take care of that.

*

Dean is several sheets to the wind, and Sam isn't far behind him.

Literally. Sam is like, two feet behind him, lounging on the bed near the headboard in hoodies and plaid while Dean perches at the edge. The remote control doesn't seem to be obeying Dean's fingers, or maybe Dean's fingers are ignoring his brain. Either way, the TV is resolutely stuck on reruns of Matlock, and Andy Griffeth's voice slogs between Dean's ears with all the grace of a mudslide.

He gives up on the remote and turns to toss it at Sam, thinking maybe his brother can get it to work -- except it hits Sam's chest a lot sooner than Dean expects, because Sam is a lot closer than he was before.

Bony knees and muscular legs slide to either side of him, Sam's spider-monkey arms encircling Dean and pinning his arms to his sides. Chest to back, and Sam is nuzzling his neck. "Cold, Dean," he says, sounding helpless. Chilled fingers twine around Dean's forearms, raising goosebumps in their wake. It's taking Dean way too long to react to this. "Really cold," Sam whines softly, just under Dean's ear.

Dean shivers. He can feel tremors running under Sam's skin, and Sam keeps tensing and trying to dampen them. They lessen slightly with the contact and Dean's body heat, but not enough. Like as not, they'll shake him apart. Dean twists in Sam's grasp. "C'mere," he says roughly, and tries to arrange them so they crash to the bed in one another's arms.

Except they're drunk, and this isn't a movie. He gets an elbow in the face, and judging by Sam's grunt, Dean narrowly misses kneeing him in the groin.

They end up sprawled, Dean flat on his back, Sam twisted around him and leaning over him, his face much too close. Sam's swaying, curls of hair falling into his eyes, obscuring hazel that's pretty much swallowed by dilated pupil anyway. He's never been able to hold his liquor. Dean would tease him, except Dean isn't much better off at the moment, and his entire world is narrowing down to the way Sam's tongue flicks out over dry lips.

"Dean," Sam says hoarsely, and this is a bad, really fucking bad idea.

"Sammy," Dean says congenially.

Sam hauls himself up, flails a bit, and slings one leg over Dean. They're at the edge of the bed, so his sock-clad foot slip-slides on the motel carpet, grinding their cocks together through Dean's jeans and Sam's plush layers of sweatpants. The friction is dulled, sweeter. Dean wants it more than he should.

There's a moment when everything stops, and the brothers just stare at one another, breathing the same whiskey-flavored air mere inches from one another. Dean blinks. It feels like it takes a century for his eyelids to descend, then open again.

Sam rolls his hips, slowly, deliberately, and the spell is broken.

"Sammy," Dean starts, but he isn't sure how to continue. Sam shakes his head, ducking so low his nose brushes across Dean's lips. He's a solid weight on Dean's chest. Maybe that's why it's so hard to breathe. His cock has taken a definite interest, perking up beneath the weight. Dean can feel the heat of his brother's dick though all those layers of sweats, fattening as Sam rolls his hips again.

The TV, forgotten in the background, tells them all about the newest advances in dental hygiene.

"Dean," Sam says conversationally, "I'm cold."

He rolls his hips again.

"Whaddaya want me to do about it?" Dean growls. He sounds, fuck, he sounds wrecked already, and they're barely moving. He's beyond trying to convince himself to stop this from happening, though. His dick is on board, so he's on board, so ready to feel all that hard heat beneath his fingertips again. He wants to taste Sam, to hold him close and devour him.

Remembering the way Sam moved against him just that morning, god, the things he _said_ , Dean goes from interested to ravenous in about two seconds flat.

Hooking his leg around Sam's, Dean flips them, pressing Sam into the mattress with drunken precision. Sam arches into him, hands tugging at Dean's hair, clawing down his back. "Dean," he keens. Dean ducks his head, nosing into Sam's neck and nipping at the skin just below his earlobe.

"You wanna be warm again, Sammy?" he murmurs, laving his tongue over the reddened spot.

"More than anything, Dean, please," Sam practically sobs, low in his throat. "I'm so sick of being cold."

Dean feels a little twinge of dissatisfaction, and covers it by driving his hips into Sam's and reveling in his brother's mewl. He mouths up over the shell of Sam's ear, burrowing into Sam's hair, breathing him in. If Dean were sober, he might wonder why it bothers him, Sam using him for warmth. He might wonder what it says about him, and how he's changing. After all, it would be better to consider this a favor, some kind of necessary transaction, wouldn't it?

Why should Dean want his brother to want him?

Right now, though, he's got too many shots riding his veins to do much other than growl in Sam's ear and worm a hand between their bodies, working Sam's multiple layers apart. When he gets a hand on Sam's cock, hard and throbbing in his grasp, Sam really does sob. It hits Dean right below his sternum, sizzling in his gut.

"Fuck, Sam," Dean groans, rolling to the side so he can stare down at the ruddy head of Sam's cock as it slides through the tunnel of his fingers. Sam works his hips, forcing his cock through faster and faster, every inhale a gasp. Dean finds a handful of Sam's hair and pulls, forcing Sam's head back. Neck taut, cords standing out, his body is a perfect arc in Dean's arms.

Fuck, he's beautiful.

Sam is making little noises, too, grunts and whines between every breath, telling Dean without words how much he loves what he's feeling. Dean's not surprised to find his own hips rolling, cock hard and aching, digging into the tense muscle of Sam's thigh. He might not last much longer. He might come in his pants like a fucking freshman, presented with the vision spread out like a feast before him, alcohol thundering through his blood. Dean is mindless, panting harsh in time with the jerking of his hand on Sam's flesh, the toss of Sam's head as he writhes in Dean's arms.

"Fuck, I'm not gonna make it," one of them says, or maybe both; one or the other gasps, "Yes!" and Dean comes with the force of a meteor, panting, grinding into the meat of Sam's thigh and blowing pulse after pulse in his boxer briefs. Sam tenses and follows with a whine, hot spurts coating Dean's hand as Sam shakes, groaning through clenched teeth.

His head flips to the side and dark eyes regard Dean, full of so many things. Dean's only response is to bring his soiled hand to his lips, and dart his tongue out for a taste.

Salty, bitter. The best part is Sam's eyes blowing wider, darker, lips parting on a silent little gasp. Dean's cock gives a feeble twitch, his stomach an answering lurch. Ohh, maybe not jizz on top of a bellyful of cheap Chinese food and liquor. Dean feels like he might be sick.

More than might be, actually. Damnit.

"Hate to spoil the mood," he thinks he says, before he lurches over Sam's lax body and vomits spectacularly on to the floor. Sam laughs at him, it shakes them both, and Dean retches again, moaning.

His stomach empties, but he can't stop heaving, long after there's nothing to heave. Sam rolls him over onto his other side, facing the wall. It's no longer funny. Dean shakes, stomach roiling, hating himself and China and life. He's never gotten this ill on alcohol alone.

"Good to know I make you sick," Dean hears his brother say, and there's no telling Sam's tone of voice.

"Not you," Dean manages queasily. "General Tso."

He doubts Sam laughs, or believes him, either way.

*

He must pass out, because next thing he knows, it's dark and Sam is huddled behind him, one hand wedged up under his shirts.

Next thing he knows after that, the sun is far too bright through chinks in the blinds, and Sam is in the shower. Dean has a hangover the size and depth of the Pacific. He wonders blearily what will happen when the bathroom door opens, and doubts that no matter what happens he'll handle it well, or any kind of delicately.

Dean's not stupid. He knows he has all the subtlety of a grease fire.

*

What happens is Sam steps out, fully clothed, hair a damp and poofy mess, and tosses a towel at Dean. "Your turn," he says, unreadable. "Better get moving. We have a ways to go today."

Dean only has the mental capacity at the moment to nod, and haul himself up, sore and shaky. He staggers in to the bathroom, strips, and steps under the spray.

Fuck, it's gonna be a long day.

 _Subtlety_ , Dean tells himself, letting the water hit him full in the face. He feels like he went ten rounds with Kangaroo Kidd. Pulverized.

 _You gotta be subtle. Handle with care. He's Sam, and he's all you've got_.

*

"So, am I better than an electric blanket, or what?"

 _Fuck_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _"What did this do to you? Tell me. And remember, this is for posterity, so... be honest. How do you feel?"_


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, I appreciate your comments. This has been a wild ride, and it's only going to get wilder before we're through. Hold on to your hats!

Sam doesn't say a word until they're on 395, somewhere in northern California, driving hard through a patch of sleet that Dean refuses to let beat them. He's recovered enough from his hangover by then, barely flinches when the kid speaks up. Sam's voice sounds hollow in the stillness of the cab, blanketed as they are by the patter of slush, the whump of the windshield wipers.

"You know it's just a solution, right?"

"Hmm?" Dean's distracted. It doesn't hit him that this is the first Sam has spoken in 8 hours until Sam continues.

"The, uh. That. It's just the best way to deal with this."

Dean shoots a surprised glance over at his brother, who is staring out the window into driving white.

"Uh..." _Come on, brain, catch up_. "Yeah?"

Out of the corner of his eye, Dean sees Sam's shoulders relax. "Good," he says, and that's the last thing he says until they reach the outskirts of Klamath Falls, OR.

The motel they choose looks normal enough on the outside. Dean throws open the door, glances in, and groans.

"Sammy, are we cursed? Is that it?"

He means it as a joke, some way to justify the sheer _orange_ of this place, but as he pushes past Sam just murmurs, "Maybe," and sucks all of the air out of the room. The set of his shoulders is tense, a solid wall, as he ducks to crank the heater up to maximum. It whines.

Dean stares after him helplessly. He feels out of character with himself with just how badly he wants to offer some kind of comfort. He tries to shake it off, but can't escape the niggling feeling that Sam may have a point.

*

A shower is necessary; not just because Dean feels grimy from their long-ass drive, but also because the heat will help him clear his head. And because he needs it, damnit, a steam-filled escape from thoughts that haven't stopped circling him since the other day.

Especially now. Cursed? When would they have been -- _nope, don't think about it. Not right now. Nothing you can do right now_ , Dean tells himself firmly, soaping absently over his chest. _Wait til you get to this Mir guy's place, suss it out with him. He's supposed to be some hot-shot expert._

Although being so unwilling to travel does put a big black mark on him in Dean's book. What's so bad about a little travel? Who doesn't love the open road? Seriously. Gotta be something wrong with him. Maybe he's a shut-in. Or a hermit.

Wait, a hermit that sees patients, that doesn't... whatever.

Dean shuts the water off. The faucet drips at him indignantly, as though he should have been in there for hours yet, or maybe fifteen minutes was far too long. Dean eyes it with malice. _You better not do that when we're trying to sleep_. A swipe of the towel takes care of the fog on the mirror. Dean avoids his own eyes, prodding gently at the mass of fading bruises around his midsection. They barely sting anymore. Good.

Through the door, Sam calls, "We need to do laundry. Can I wear one of your undershirts?" Dean can already hear the chill shaking through his brother's voice.

"Sure," Dean answers absently, still poking at himself. "They're in my --" But then, he remembers what else is in his duffel, and grabs at the towel. "No, wait!"

He crashes out into the main room, barely keeping the towel around his waist, but Sam's already got the stuffed whale in hand. His smug face, asking _really?_ is just aching to be smacked.

"Shut up," Dean grunts, stalking over. He tears Julio Finn from Sam's grasp.

"I mean, in your _duffel_ \--"

"Shut up," Dean repeats, adding, "Julio's judging you _and_ your life choices." He yanks one of his oldest, rattiest undershirts from the side pile in his duffel and hurls it at Sam's chest, replacing the stuffed orca and zipping the bag shut.

He turns to Sam, glaring, daring him to say something. Sam just holds his hands up in surrender. His mouth is twitching around the edges like it does when he tries not to laugh, but his eyes are sad.

"It's okay, Dean," he says. The fingers holding the shirt are long and fidgeting through the cloth. Dean realizes after a bit he's been watching them do it. He glances back up just as Sam turns away.

"Yeah..." he says, as the bathroom door closes. "If you say so."

He's not talking about Julio Finn. He's pretty sure Sam wasn't, either.

*

The room has two queen beds. Dean did it for Sam as much as for himself; it was habitual, sure, but a few extra thought processes snagged in his brain along the way. When he thinks about it -- sober, and awake -- he knows that his brother is right. The situations they've found themselves in lately has everything to do with a temporary solution to a dangerous problem. That's it. This newest mess has nothing to do with Dean's pervasive need to make things right for Sam. Nor the odd squirming in his gut when he thinks about said mess. Certainly -- and he's actively avoiding dwelling on this one -- not any inkling that he might be enjoying those situations. That he might wish that Sam --

Okay, you know what? Dean is done thinking for today.

He flops on his back on the creaky mattress. The deep breaths he takes are less than satisfying, full of motel musk. Across the narrow space between beds, Sam is already bundled up in a mess of blankets, his back to Dean. He's breathing like he's asleep. Dean knows he's not. He knows what Sam sounds like when he's truly, deeply asleep, and knows there's no way for Sam to fake it.

Dean'll let the kid fool himself, though. He rolls on his side, away from Sam, wishing he could turn his brain off.

The black-out curtains that barely cover their lone window are limned in a soft, orange glow from outside. Dean traces the light, completing that square again and again. He can hear Sam shivering behind him, the bed frame wobbling ever so slightly in a vibrating rhythm. Something inside of Dean lurches, reaching out across the divide. He wants to make it better.

Dean frowns in the tinted darkness.

It takes him all of twenty second to decide to slip out, and head for the nearest bar. If Sam doesn't need him, there's no reason to agonize over wanting him to, or what it might mean if he did. Dean's never been a fan of deep thought, anyhow. It always gets the thinker into trouble.

"Just look at Socrates," Dean mutters, pulling on his boots a little more roughly than was necessary.

Sam made a noise from his blanket cocoon, sleepily questioning. Shit, maybe he was sleeping. Close to it, at least. Dean palms the Impala's keys.

"Nothing, Sammy," he whispers on his way out. The persistent whine of the heating unit probably drowns it out.

Dean wonders which is his hemlock; alcohol, or Sam.

*

The bar he finds is dark inside, and smells of wood polish and sweat. Dean sucks in a great lungful of the warmer air, letting a licentious smile spread languidly as he saunters up to the bar. This is his element. Five steps and he's back in the saddle, his eye on two of the six women present. They're eying him right back.

He wonders, briefly, if he could have them together.

The bartender ironically asks him his poison and Dean tells him _bourbon, neat,_ barely sparing a glance for the guy. One of the girls is edging closer, an auburn-haired solid stack of a woman who looks like she knows what Dean likes. She smirks when she catches him looking, and by the time his drink comes they're rubbing shoulders, sharing loaded glances. The slide of glass on wood catches his attention. "Hey, thanks, man --"

White teeth flash in a grin. Above them, dark eyes, well-shaped nose and high cheekbones, framed by waves of black hair. "No problem," the vision says, and moves off to another patron. Oddly enough, there's a white curl of hair tucked behind one ear. Dean is speechless. He downs his drink in one gulp, dry eyes still riveted on the bartender's back. His brain is trying valiantly to run through its monsters Rolodex, see if that little physical quirk is significant, but it keeps skipping like a scratched record over the play of muscles and shoulder blades beneath white cotton.

 _What the hell is wrong with me? I'm not, I'm not gay, I'm not even bi-curious..._ He blinks. The man bends gracefully to retrieve a glass, and Dean still can't look away, trapped by his thought process and a well-toned ass in fitted slacks. _Sure, I can appreciate beauty as much as the next guy_ , he rationalizes desperately, _but --_

A memory hits him: _Sam bucking against him, the slide of slick flesh through the circle of his fingers. The way that handful felt, inside and out_ . Another: _Sam with a lapful of girl, moaning_ Dean's _name. The frisson it sent up Dean's spine when he did_.

Dean can recognize when he's utterly fucked over, but that doesn't mean he's a stranger to denial. His thoughts stutter, an engine with a faulty starter. No turning over, no moving on.

_That doesn't mean -- that was just -- I mean, just because, with Sammy, it -- it doesn't -- it isn't --_

"Hot, isn't he," the woman beside him purrs, shifting closer. It takes a moment before Dean can parse through his crisis and process that.

When he does, he blurts an incredulous, "What?"

"You think he'd want a threeway?" she muses. She's leaning against Dean's arm, a counterpoint of heat to all the weirdness in his head, her eyes tracking the play of the bartender's back and shoulders as he serves the far end of the bar. Dean follows her line of sight, and catches himself after far too long a gander.

Seriously, what the hell?

He shakes his head and looks away, wishing he could conjure another drink without having to interact. His revelations have left him wishing for a hole to crawl into, instead.

The woman mistakes his gesture for an answer. "Bet you're wrong," she murmurs wickedly. "Bet if I ask him right now, he'd say yes. You and me together, we don't look half shabby. What do you say?"

"Can I get you another?" comes a smooth male voice.

"No!" Dean blurts as an answer to both, panicked. "I mean, yes," he corrects, with a recovered congenial smile up at the bartender, "and keep 'em coming."

If he's going to have some kind of undefinable crisis -- not _gay_ , not yet -- no way in hell is he doing it sober.

"I'll match you," the woman at his side says craftily. Despite the fact that she might be evil, Dean decides he likes her.

Over the course of many, many drinks, Dean learns (among other things) that her name is Susan, she's an Aquarius as well, and a geography teacher at a high school two towns over. "Can't risk the kids seeing me hammered," she says, regretfully. "Bad influence, and all that."

"m a pretty bad influence, myself," Dean confides. "Screwed up my little brother somehow, now everything's gone all weird." Because it's perfectly clear now, what else could it be? Dean must have raised him wrong. Wasn't their dad that fucked Sam up -- that _fucked Sam_ \--

Dean's stomach gives a lurch. He stops moving, fixes his gaze, and breathes deep. None of that. No puking. Nuh-uh.

Susan is saying something, the bar noise fading back in when Dean is sure he's not gonna lose it. "-- not as bad as you think," she says.

"s plenty bad," Dean snorts. Susan purses her lips.

The bartender -- Jeremy, he said his name was Jeremy -- leans over to get Dean's attention. "I gotta cut you off," he says sympathetically. Dean stares up at him, at those dark eyes. Is he really that fucked up? He can't tell. Everything is just kind of... wavy.

He wonders existentially what he looks like to Jeremy right now. If his lips are as bottle-kiss swollen as they feel. He knows his pupils must be huge; all the lights in the place are brighter than they were before, each with its own nimbus of blueish white. He wonders if he looks as doable as he feels, all his clothes rubbing so slightly over skin just aching to be touched. He gets this way when he drinks, sometimes. He wonders --

"Okay," Dean says hoarsely. He's really fucked up if all he can think about is hauling the guy over his bar for a kiss. He doesn't have to look over at Susan to know she's looking at him, watching him make a fool of himself. She understands, he knows she does, but that doesn't make it any less mortifying. Even drunk, Dean is just as self-conscious as ever -- it seems that tonight, though, his bravado has escaped him.

Jeremy blinks, then grins. He's got dimples, Dean observes dumbly. Just like Sammy. That thought sparks a reminder, something he forgot to do? It's lost when Jeremy speaks. "I thought you'd give me more trouble than that," he says. "You got someone to drive you home?"

"Ain't got a --" Dean mumbles, too slow in drink to hold his tongue, but Susan cuts him off with a bright, "We'll walk." Bless her.

"In this?" Jeremy quirks an eyebrow and tosses his head toward the TV. Dean gapes up at it, uncomprehending. That can't be right. Three inches of snow? And it's almost two a.m.? He's been here for _six hours?_

He digs for his phone knowing, just knowing --

Nine missed calls, four texts.

_Heater's out. No answer from the front desk. I can't leave._

_Dean, where are you?_

_i cant feel m fbgrs Drnn wherre ar yiu_

_plz cm bk_

"Fuck!" Dean hisses, jumping off of his stool. Adrenaline floods the alcohol out of his veins and leaves behind something that crackles. He stares down at his phone for all of a millisecond, running a hand through his hair, before his eyes snap to Jeremy. He can feel the other man boiling alive from the force of it but all that registers is _gotta get to Sammy._

"You need to give me a ride," he growls.

Jeremy shakes his head, eyes wide. "I can't just close, man --"

Before Dean realizes what's happening he's lashed out and dragged Jeremy halfway over the bar by the front of his crisp white shirt. Susan is backing away. The whole place has gone silent, except the TV droning on about the weather. The weather Dean should have expected, the trouble he brought on Sam himself.

"Take me home," _to Sam_ , he snarls. " _Now_."

*

 _You learned this lesson already_ , Dean tells himself harshly, waiting impatiently for patrons to shuffle out so Jeremy can lock the doors. _You can't afford to be selfish. Ever. You think only of yourself, and Sammy will get hurt._

He thinks of a gray and tattered shtriga hovering over his brother's limp form, moments away from death before John tore in and shot it out of the air. Dean was only downstairs for a minute or two. One more, and he would have been alone for the rest of his life.

 _You can't leave him. Not ever again_.

*

Jeremy drives a classic Bronco, and it bucks its way across the ice. His hands are white-knuckled on the wheel. He barely glances at the psycho in his passenger seat.

Dean spares a mournful thought for his Baby, trapped beneath all that snow, before worry for Sam forces that feeling out as well. He's tried to call twelve times already. No answer.

There are no words between he and Jeremy when they skid up to the motel. Dean snaps the side door open, tumbles out. He doubts he'll even ever see the guy again, and doesn't care. Panic is starting to override the flash of adrenaline, the numb of his drunk and his hunter's control. It's making him shaky. In the few feet it takes to get to the door, his twitching fingers freeze, useless. He can barely get his key in the lock.

God, what is he going to find when he gets it open?

He almost gives up and kicks it down, despite what a bad idea that would be, but then the key slides home. He's in and shutting the door against the chill in the space of a breath, stripping out of his jacket and shirt as he strides across the floor. Dean tears his boots off, feeling something catch and break, pays it no mind as he fumbles with his jeans. The room is a meat locker. His breath stands out in clouds before he's scrabbling at the edge of Sam's blankets and burrowing under.

The air inside is stale. It smells like lighter fluid, and fear.

In the very center, Sam is curled into a tight, pathetic ball, wearing every article of clothing they both own. He still feels smaller than he did even as a child when Dean gathers him into his arms. He can't tell if his brother's frigid form even carries a heartbeat, his own heart hammering too loudly in his ears, pounding wetly behind his eyes. He breathes harshly in the too-small space and forces his hands under all the layers, under Sam's locked arms, rubbing at Sam's chest. The skin feels clammy, too cold. God, how long has he been like this? Dean didn't check the time stamp on those texts. It could be hours Sam's been here without heat, without hope, trying in vain to reach his big brother and keep himself warm...

Dean realizes he's muttering as he rubs, encouragements and sentiment he doubts he'd ever tell Sam to his face, how Sam is the best brother he ever could have hoped for and he's such a trooper and if he'd just wake up, Dean will fix this and never leave him again, he's sorry, so sorry.

Hot tears tickle his nose on the way down. He keeps rubbing.

He doesn't know how long he's been at it, muttering til he's hoarse, moving against Sam for frictive heat until his skin goes numb, but just about when he realizes he might be stone-cold sober again, Sam lurches against him with a little gasp. It exhales on a sob that Dean squeezes right out of Sam's lungs, he's holding on so tightly. "Sammy," he breathes into Sam's hair, voice cracking, and Sam shudders, his teeth clacking together. He's trying to speak, trying to say Dean's name, but it gets stuck. Dean hears it anyway.

"God, Sammy, so fucking sorry," he babbles, his voice raspy from overuse. "Never leave you again, god _damnit_ I'm sorry --"

Sam coughs. "Dean," he says firmly. Dean shuts up. His brother rolls stiffly in his arms until they're face to face, Sam's nose brushing Dean's cheekbone.

"Are you naked?"

Dean blushes in the dark. "Body heat," he defends gruffly. "Better than your Zippo idea," he adds, unfairly vindictive and he knows it. "You could have burnt the whole place down!"

"Where did you go?" Sam asks quietly. Somehow, that's worse than any snark or retaliation. Dean rests his forehead against his brother's shoulder, turns so his eyes press into Sam's neck.

"Nowhere important," he sighs, hoping Sam will understand. Now that the danger is past, guilt gnaws deep and hungry in Dean's gut.

Sam just tugs him closer. _I'm just glad you're back_ , the gesture says, and Dean suddenly has to bite down on an uncharacteristic noise of want and relief.

"We gotta get to this doctor guy," he says instead. His voice is still a little higher than he'd like. Luckily, Sam doesn't acknowledge it, just nods. His hair rustles against the sheets, over Dean's face. "Yeah," is all he says.

*

Dean lets Sam chew out the motel manager. Kid is scary when he wants to be, and besides, there's no way Sam is making the trek back through six-inch snowdrifts to rescue the Impala. Dean took her out, Dean goes and gets her.

She's toasty inside by the time Sam slides in, and it quirks a smile from him beneath his chill-reddened nose. Dean raises his eyebrows, _so? Did you chew the guy a new asshole?_

Sam holds up a wad of cash, grinning. "$267, all he had in the till. I had him convinced I had a medical condition that requires a constant high temperature. That I could have died, an' if he didn't want all kinds of inspectors riding him that he better pay me off."

"Wonder what he had in the safe," Dean muses, only half serious. He catches Sam's eye roll as Sam turns to look out the window, and grins. "You know you love me," he teases.

If he didn't know Sam as well as he did, he wouldn't catch it at all: Sam tenses for half an instant, freezing still as the pristine snowbanks they pass, before turning and offering an exasperated, "Maybe if you didn't chew with your mouth open, Neanderthal."

"At least I'm chewing something substantial, y'little salad-sniffing bitch," Dean's mouth snaps back on autopilot. He's still analyzing what he -- what he _thinks_ he saw.

"At least I won't have a heart attack before thirty, jerk."

"Already had one, remember? Moot point," Dean points out gleefully.

"Dean," Sam chides, quietly reproachful. "Don't joke about that. You almost died."

"Almost being the operative word, Sammy," Dean shoots back, all tongue in cheek, trying to ignore the pang from remembering that someone _did_ die. Died in a pool so he could live.

Jesus fuck, their lives are depressing.

"Did Bobby tell you where this guy lives?" Sam asks, just as Dean, casting about for something else to dwell on, realizes he has no idea where he's going.

He pulls out his phone.

Once again, Bobby answers the question without being asked. "You're heading up toward Omak," he says without preamble. "Find the Diamond Diner and take the road behind it ten miles out. You can't miss his place."

Dean has never had trouble finding a diner, either. Confident, he thanks Bobby and hangs up.

"We're gonna get you warmed up, Sammy," he promises, reaching under the seat for the tape box. He keeps one eye on the road, which is empty, and still pops back up to Sam's lip-pursed disapproval. He doesn't have to say anything for Dean to hear him, loud and clear.

"You take all the fun out of life," Dean fake-pouts. He picks AC/DC and cranks it all the way up, just to annoy his brother. So easy. True to form, Sam shifts his shoulders against the leather, brow crinkling.

Dean barely catches the words he mumbles. They sound something like, "will we ever listen to something _I_ want to hear?"

An idea strikes. It doesn't feel like a bad one.

"Maybe, but you love me too much," Dean teases, watching.

This time, there's no hesitation. Sam just rolls his eyes. Dean spends the rest of the drive wondering if he's crazy, or if he'd be driving himself crazy just by wondering.

*

Vladimir does not live in a castle, much to Dean's disappointment. His split-level ranch is a little ratty on the eyes, but after that day of driving they're just glad to be done. Neither one of them want to sleep. Sam is out if the car and striding toward Mir's front door before Dean has even shut off the ignition.

_"I just want to be warm again, Dean," he says, when Dean asks for the fourteenth time if he's sure he doesn't want to stop and rest. Sam's gaze never leaves the scenery. He sounds wistful, but hardened, his bony knee jiggling up against the side panel. "We can sleep when I'm warm."_

Dean knows how he feels. He's spent the whole day trying to lull himself into a false sense of security, alert level high after last night's scare. He's not even sure he could sleep.

He eyes the innocuous structure suspiciously. There's no movement anywhere. He's seen this kind of stillness before, in houses occupied only by the dead. Unease trickles between his shoulder blades. This is how some hunts feel, right before they're beset and overwhelmed. Dean doesn't like it one bit.

Sam's given up pounding on the door and is trying to peer through the heavily-curtained windows, one hand rubbing restlessly up and down his other arm. His breath hardly fogs on the glass. "Bobby told him we were coming, right?"

A sharp crack to his left has Dean whirling, grabbing the gun from his jacket pocket and putting a bead on the very dour, very pale individual emerging from the woods. Sam's gaping, looking from Dean to the newcomer, who raises his hands in such a blase way that Dean is tempted to shoot him on principle.

"You 'Mir'?" Dean barks.

The man makes a sardonic, sweeping little bow that dips his head and sways strands of pale hair over his eyes, which appear as pale as the rest of him and not any discernible color. "You must be the hunters," he says flatly. Dean can only hear him because the rest of the world is so still. It's like this man never raises his voice for anyone. Dean's finger itches toward the trigger. Something here just doesn't sit right.

Sam is inching down the porch. "I'm Sam Winchester, this is my brother, Dean," he says, in his best placating voice. Dean fights the urge to roll his eyes. He settles for grinding his jaw when Sam continues. "I've got a problem -- our mutual friend seems to think you've got a solution. How about we stand down --" and he's directing that at Dean like Dean's the bad guy here, _so_ unfair -- "and go inside?"

Oh, yeah. Shit. Sam's freezing his ass off. Fluidly Dean flicks the safety and holds up the gun in only slightly mocking surrender. Without looking, he feels his brother relax.

The pale man, Mir, turns lazily on his heel. "This way," he says. He sounds almost bored.

Dean waits til Sam draws abreast of him before he moves to follow. He glances at his brother, and though he feels validated to see that Sam looks just as wary as he feels, it does nothing to ease his discomfort. His fine-honed senses are telling him to get the fuck out of there, and he knows Sam's gotta be sensing it, too. There's something rotten in the state of Washington.

It occurs to Dean just then that this is the most half-assed they've gone into anything in a very long time. He was so focused on the possibility of a solution that it didn't occur to him to question any of this. Sure, he trusts Bobby with his and Sam's lives, but he hasn't lived this long without a healthy dose of good old-fashioned paranoia. They didn't look this guy up. They didn't ask around the hunting community. Hell, they haven't even seen Bobby in person --

Sam claps a hand to Dean's chest and stills him. Startled, Dean blinks. His train of thought has ferried him all the way around the house, and Mir is standing just outside a much more heavily fortified door than that in the front. His gaze as he eyes them is inscrutable.

"I know Bobby Singer. I like Bobby Singer," he says. "I don't know you."

"Aw, you don't like me?" Dean quips. He ignores Sam hissing his name in warning, the hand still on his chest grabbing a trembling handful of his jacket. It's not like this is a new behavior, anyhow; his brother ought to be used to it. Uncertainty and a twinge of fear will always bring out the asshole in him. "Tough titties, sweetheart. I don't need you to like me." _I just need you to fix Sam_ . He stares Mir down. _Don't give a rat's ass what you think of me_.

_You, or anyone._

"You should take care with words like those," Mir says mildly. "From what Mister Singer has told me, you need services only I can provide. It would be in your best interest to remain in my good graces."

Dean opens his mouth to say something hotly, probably something stupid. Sam cuts him off. "We've got no quarrel here," he says. "My brother just tends to be kind of..." Dean can practically hear Sam mentally listing his less-than-desirable qualities, searching for the least offensive one: _impatient, violent, disinclined to make nice,_ "...overprotective."

That's... actually not that bad.

Mir looks less than impressed, but says nothing. He turns to work the incomprehensible latch on the door. Dean really, really wants to say something, but he keeps his mouth shut just in case this guy really can fix Sam. Wouldn't do to piss off the real deal, and lose their only shot.

He keeps his gun handy, though. Bullets speak louder than words.

The door opens up to a warm, low-lit hallway that slopes away under the house. Dean would bet a bottle of Jack that the entire ranch-style up there is nothing but a decoy. The hallway stretches the length of the house, leading to a twisting set of stairs that take them down into the earth. The walls are white-washed plaster, not stone, but that doesn't stop Dean from sniggering.

Behind him Sam mutters something; all Dean hears is "If we... I swear to God..."

"Didn't take you for a praying man, Sammy," Dean casts back under his breath.

"Were you ever planning to take this seriously?" Sam hisses.

Dean wishes he hadn't taken point down these stairs just so he could see his brother's face. "I am taking this seriously," he says. "Just, Sam, the guy lives underground --"

"Will you shut the fuck up for two seconds and --"

"If you two have finished your lovers' spat," Mir says in that same droll, mild tone that makes Dean want to choke the life out of him. (As it is, the guy gets a seriously evil eye. To Dean's deep disappointment, he remains unfazed.) "I would ask you to please remove your shoes."

"Uh..." Dean balks, for several reasons, one of them also being the reason he sleeps clothed. He goes for the most comical: "None of us want me to do that." He punctuates it with a wave of his hand by his nose and a self-deprecating chuckle. It earns him a raised eyebrow, which he counts as a victory. Not that he's keeping score.

"We'd, uh, really rather not?" Sam hedges from behind him, when it becomes clear that they're not moving forward with this. Dean is unimpressed, even less so when Mir's eyes shift back behind him with a glint that is clearly calculating.

"How badly do you want to be cured?" Mir asks quietly, and Dean thinks _low blow_ with a lip curling in disgust as he hears Sam sigh and sit on the steps to take off his boots. Dean himself refuses to get any lower than he has to in front of this guy, and cocks one foot up on his thigh.

"Might wanna crack that door," he says rudely, yanking at his laces. "The air in here is about to get nasty."

Another unamused glance, and Mir turns to the door. Ever the height of maturity, Dean sticks out his tongue at the man's back.

Then the door opens, and the air inside is so sweet, so fresh, that Dean's mouth gapes open around his tongue and leaves him with an expression he'd probably regret if he were even paying attention.

His first impression is, _underground greenhouse_. He immediately checks around for the five-pointed leaves and realizes that, no, that term doesn't even begin to cover it. It's more like a conservatory, only without the glass. Well-lit, somehow, though Dean can't see the source. Old-fashioned brass fixtures stand artfully amid broad, leafy plants, somehow ageless in a tropical atmosphere that almost immediately beads sweat beneath Dean's collar. The ceiling arches high, and vines climb nearly to its apex, spiraling down into delicate tendrils that must bloom in a frenzy come spring. The air smells of soil, and something else that reminds Dean of all the libraries Sam has ever dragged him into.

As they pad forward, socked feet shuffling across the warm tile floor, Dean slides his jacket off and over one arm. John's memory just isn't greenhouse material. Behind him, he can hear Sam breathing easier. Of course, if Dean is sweating, Sam must feel right at home. Another low surge of _this is so messed up_ turns Dean's stomach slowly. He sends up a prayer to whoever's listening. _Please let this douchebag fix what's broken. Whatever the fuck it is_.

There's a parquet-tiled area set up to the side, with a brass exam table stretched with black leather, a spotless desk, and a lamp that looks to run on gas, burning low. An armchair done in the same tight leather is set up in full view of the table. Dean snags it with a grin up at his brother. “Front-row seat,” he says, cheekily, to Sam's scowl.

“If you'll make yourselves comfortable,” Mir drawls, pulling open a drawer on the desk and taking out a – no joke – ancient black doctor's bag. Sam looks a little alarmed. He's standing well away from the table.

“What's the matter, Sammy?” Dean ribs him. “Afraid to turn your head and cough?”

“Dean,” Sam frowns. “This isn't a – you know what, never mind. Uh, Mir?” he questions. “What exactly --”

“Please, sit on the table,” Mir says. “This will only take a minute.” He pulls on gloves with a snap, and Dean can't help it. He cackles, waggling his fingers at Sam. _Cough_ , he mouths, thoroughly enjoying Sam's mounting alarm. The kid's eyebrows like to disappear into his bangs, make it look like he doesn't have any.

“Uh --” Sam starts.

“The table, please, Mister Winchester,” Mir says, with the air of someone who has much better things to do.

Sam's jaw shuts with an audible snap. He shuffles up on to the table with a swivel of his hips that should not make Dean blink more than once. Shouldn't, but does. Dean busies himself tracing the origins of a vine that's creeping along the floor until Sam is settled.

“I am going to do a series of tests,” Mir says, advancing on Sam. It's only because Dean is looking at the floor already that he happens to notice Mir is wearing shoes, blackwatch plaid house slippers with plastic soles. Studying them, Dean realizes he never heard Mir's footsteps.

He shifts in his seat, putting his gun within reach.

“Are you going to shoot me, Dean?” Mir says.

“What?” Dean barks, tense and on alert. His hand slides into his pocket, and he fingers the safety with honest intent.

“I said, to your brother, that heart rate and bp are showing normal,” Mir tells him in a tone that plainly says he thinks Dean's crazy. “Now, like I also said once before,” he says pointedly to Dean, “I need you to chew these,” and that he directs to Sam. He's holding out what looks like a pair of chewable children's vitamins. Sam takes them from him and holds them up.

“Flintstones,” he says, disbelieving.

“Often, a constant decrease of temperature can be attributed to a vitamin deficiency,” Mir says patiently. “While you would not be coming to one such as me were that the case, it never hurts to be thorough. When you've swallowed, open up.”

Sam doesn't mention already knowing about vitamin levels. He doesn't actually take the vitamins Mir gives him, either. He holds them under his tongue until the man's back is turned, then slips them into his pocket. Dean's proud, glad his little brother still has his head on straight. He gives Sam a surreptitious thumbs up, grinning when Sam ducks his head with a smile.

The grin only goes skin deep. Dean is worried. The floor feels gritty under his socks, when he scrunches his toes. It's distracting.

The thermometer Mir sticks under Sam's tongue is attached to a brass-plated, modern monitor, and it makes a very 21st-century beep when it's done. Dean is only minutely reassured. He runs over the words he knows he heard, the memory coming back the same each time. How is it that Sam didn't hear that?

Dean adjusts his lounging posture so that both feet are flat on the floor, his center of gravity poised for flight if it becomes necessary. He's already tried to plot exit strategies, but the damned plants everywhere are foiling that up nicely.

Sam turns his head and coughs. Dean distracts from his paranoia long enough to crow, “Ha!” and earn a black look from his brother.

Mir removes his hand. “There seems to be some shr--”

“Don't,” Sam interrupts hastily, “say it, my brother is --”

“This is a medical procedure, Mister Winchester, there's nothing to --”

“I know, but if you'd just --”

“Sammy,” Dean says, unable to keep quiet, “is Puxatawney Phil saying there's gonna be six more weeks of winter?”

Sam grinds his jaw. “I hate you,” he growls, staring pointedly at a plant.

*

After the physical, Mir leads them around a wall of lush foliage, where tile becomes carpet and the conservatory reveals a tiny, hidden study. Shelves that reach as high as the vaulted ceiling are lined top to bottom with heavy medical tomes, boasting titles that make Dean's eyes cross. He pretends to be fascinated with the sliding ladder – he has always thought libraries that had those were pretty cool – while he scouts the place and pays close attention to what Mir is telling Sam.

“Have you encountered any spirits recently with connections to the cold?”

“No,” Sam says, thoughtful, “they've all been pretty run-of-the-mill jobs. Poltergeist, pukha, black dog, daeva... one we thought was a vamp but turned out to be some sicko running a black-market blood bank and making it look like something out of the movies.” The disgust on his face should not be adorable. Dean focuses harder on the ladder.

“What about cursed objects?” Mir asks. “Have you handled anything that could have stricken you in this fashion?”

“Not that I'm aware of,” Sam says. “Most of the jobs lately have been pretty cut and dry. Anything weird and unexplained that's happened, has happened after the effects became noticeable.”

“Like what?”

“Like this thing in Texas... look, can I ask you something?”

“Of course, Mister Winchester.” Dean doesn't like the way Mir's voice has smoothed. He's gone from doctor to politician in the span of a conversation. That sense of wrongness starts back up along Dean's spine.

“Have you ever seen something like this before?”

Mir takes awhile to answer. Dean wishes he weren't so jaded that he couldn't just take the pause as honestly thoughtful.

“I... have,” the man says slowly, to both Sam and Dean's surprise, if Sam's fleeting expression is anything to judge by. “Once,” Mir continues. “But it was linked to a specific cursed object, and if like you say you have not handled anything suspicious... and what's worse, I cannot break a curse without knowing its origins. In that situation, the client was able to bring me the box she opened.”

Oh. “So you can't help him,” Dean says flatly, over his shoulder. He's had enough of feeling wrong about everything in this place. His fingernail is poised to start dragging a jagged line down one volume's immaculate, bound spine. He thinks about doing it anyway, out of spite.

Mir glances over, colorless eyes glinting. “It'd be a very wealthy man indeed who could cure something he can't define, Mister Winchester.”

“All I'm hearing is, you don't know shit, which is what you could have told us from the get-go,” Dean says shortly. “Come on, Sam. We're leaving.”

“ _Dean_ ,” Sam snaps. “Don't be an asshole.” To Mir, he says, “Are you sure there's nothing you can do?”

“Unless you wish me to waste your time with hokum and herbalism, neither of which are proven cures for anything, then I'm afraid my answer is no.” Mir, to his credit, sounds genuinely remorseful. Too bad for him Dean doesn't give a shit. Dean's antsy, the heebie-jeebies of this whole situation wearing his last nerve thin.

“That's...” Sam sucks in a breath. “We were really hoping you could help.”

“I am sorry, Sam,” Mir says, saying his name for the first time. Dean doesn't like how it sounds. “If it is any consolation, I know what it's like, being under a spell. The helplessness... the desperation.”

“Hey,” Dean says sharply. “Who said anything about spells?” He's staring at Mir like he could burn holes straight through that pale skin. First this talk of curses, but spells – that's a whole new animal.

“Spells, curses, enchantments,” Mir shrugs elegantly. “When one is the target, they all tend to feel about the same.”

Sam is tugging Dean's sleeve. “Come on,” he urges.

With one last narrowing of his eyes at Mir, Dean gives up and follows. He's not happy turning his back on the guy. His shoulders are so tense, they feel like they could be set in stone. He keeps his hand in his pocket, caressing his gun. It doesn't calm him like he wishes it would.

Mir's voice floats after them through the plants. “I wish you all the best, Misters Winchester – and good luck.”

Dean thinks he hears, “you'll need it,” as they open the heavy door, but when he sits down to pull his boots on, all he can hear is the faint running of water. Mir didn't even follow them to see them out. Dean wonders yet again if he's hearing things, if he's going crazy. Maybe he just needs his ears checked.

He's sure as hell not going to any doctor like Mir to do it.

They trudge back down the warm hallway. Sam's dejection pours off of him in larger waves the closer they get to outside, and winter. Dean is less than surprised to realize he aches to make it better. It's more of a physical ache this time, though, something squeezing the center of his chest. Memories of other times he's felt like this threaten to surface, and he brushes them off with a deep breath.

“Hey, Sammy?” he says, trying for light and failing.

Sam's glance is despondent and brief.

“We will fix this.” Dean's certain, in the same way he's certain he'll win a poker game when he's already down three hands.

Sam doesn't even look at him again, just shoves open the outer door and staggers out into the snow.

*

The drive is agonizing. Not because there's no music; that was Dean's decision, he doesn't feel like pissing Sammy off even worse than life already has, thank you very much. Not because of the snow, either, because the Impala has always handled rough weather well and Dean is a pro at handling her. No, what eats at him more than anything is how morose and small Sammy is over there in the passenger seat, hunched in the middle of his space because the window is too cold to lean against. He's shivering, and still trying to hide it, like Dean doesn't already know he's miserable.

Dean focuses on driving, on getting them somewhere warmer as fast as he can.

It's a clear day lightning strike of a surprise when Sam says, suddenly, sharply, “Pull over.”

All Dean can manage in response is a less-than-articulate, “Huh?”

“Pull. Over,” Sam says from between clenched teeth, and he looks so fierce when Dean glances over that the Impala is throwing up powder on the shoulder before Dean registers having twitched the wheel.

“Turn around,” Sam says, and that just doesn't compute.

“What?”

“I said, turn around, turn toward me,” Sam barks, and he reaches over to grab Dean's knee, throwing his legs open and tugging one up on to the seat. “Get your legs up here, put your back against the door.”

“Sammy, what the fuck are you doing?”

“I am sick as fuck,” he spits, grabbing Dean's other leg, “of being cold, Dean. Sick of it.” He yanks Dean's ankles toward him, and Dean has to scramble to grab the back of the seat, the steering wheel, in order to stay upright.

“Sammy?” he questions faintly.

“Don't,” Sam says, a world-weary fuckton of emotions running through the word. “Just don't.”

His fingers are fumbling with Dean's zipper. What is happening? Dean can't catch up, so he has to hold on, clutching leather like it'll give him answers if he squeezes hard enough. The car is warm, idling, and Sam's fingers dipping into his boxer briefs are a cold shock. Dean yelps. “Sammy!” He kicks. His brain finally catches up to the point where his hand leaves the back of the seat and tries to intercept Sam, but Sam just bats him away, hunching forward, trapping Dean's legs and blocking his hand and, Christ, pulling his cock out.

Dean's soft, but the shock of Sam touching him has his dick twitching and filling despite his confusion. He gapes at his brother, the brown curls falling and hiding Sam's eyes so Dean can't see what's going on in there. He can't see what Sam's thinking – like he'd know even if Sam told him.

But he can guess.

“Sammy,” he says, quieter.

Sam doesn't answer, but his fingers are working, massaging Dean's cock til it begins to perk up in earnest. A few times he dips into Dean's underwear to toy with his balls. Blood is rushing south, and Dean can't help his little whimper at the first real, hard stroke of Sam's fingers. Sam does it again, his other hand tightening on Dean's thigh, his eyes fixed on what he's doing. Dean's hips roll up jerkily, matching when Sam starts to find a rhythm.

“ _Sam_ ,” he moans, his head thunking back against the window. His hips are thrusting up on autopilot now, finding the tunnel of Sam's fingers to be the best damn thing he's ever felt. Sam squeezes a little, twists his wrist. Dean gasps at the flood of heat that pours up along his cock, sinks into his bones, darts up into his face and numbs his lips so that when he bites down hard on one of them, he doesn’t feel it.

He does feel the gust of breath on his exposed cock. Feels it like a gunshot to the gut.

Sam's cool lips closing over the head of his cock? Forget it, Dean's done. There are no words for this, but he tries. “Jesus Christing fuck,” he breathes, and it comes out high-pitched and wanting. Sammy is sucking on his cock, swirling his tongue down the shaft and taking Dean in until Dean can feel his brother's nose brushing his pubic hair, still hidden away in his briefs. Sam chokes a little when the head hits the back of his throat, draws off, catches his breath and dives back down, this time opening for it and letting Dean slip right into tight, wet heat. Dean keens at the feel of it, finding a handful of Sam's hair. He tries to keep from tugging, but when Sam fucking swallows around him, so carefully, Dean can't help the way his fingers clench. He – Sam – this –

“Sammy, oh god, oh Christ, Sam,” he babbles, “what the fuck are you doing,” and Sam draws back up, sucking hard. Dean can't see much but the back of Sam's head, he's bent so awkwardly against the car door, but he imagines Sam's cheeks hollowed over the spit-slicked shaft, the head of Dean's cock bumping against taut skin. Dean's whole body tenses, his cock throbs, and he feels the blurt of precome that leaves him and slides right down Sam's throat.

Curse the kid, Sam _hums_ in approval, licking and sucking, twisting his neck like a fucking pro. Dean can't stop his hips from moving, rolling up and grinding into Sam's face, and Sam lets him, diving down and sliding back up, again and again until Dean can't even babble real words anymore, just pants and moans and takes it. God, he never thought – Sam giving him something like this –

Fingers work at his pants, yanking them open and down, exposing more of Dean to the heat of the car and Sam. Fingers trace the seam of his balls, through lines of spit dribbling down, and Sam is still sucking like his life depends on it, like he can pull Dean's soul out that way. Dean can't even really hear the noises he's making anymore, tossing his head against the cold, hard window at how fucking good it feels, at the fact that _Sam_ _is letting Dean fuck his mouth_. One finger slides lower, lower. Dean arches his back, his legs splayed slutty and wide as they'll go in the space they've got, so Sam can slide that finger down across his perineum and over his furled little hole.

Dean cries out at that touch, whole-body shock and stars, hips canting up for more. He gasps, unable to ask for what he wants, but Sam just hums around his cock again and slides that finger over his hole, rubbing the spit that's collecting there into the wrinkled skin. God, no idea it felt this good – Dean's played with himself a few times when he's been drunk and frisky, but he could never get the angle right and always gave up. This, though, Sam's at the right angle, and he's dipping that finger in closer and closer.

“Please,” Dean gasps, “please,” and Sam's fingertip slides right in.

“Oh, fuck!” The back of his head is going to be bruised all to hell but Dean doesn't care, not when he's got his cock in Sam's throat and Sam's finger in his ass, and it feels better than anything he's ever done. Better than any partner, anything he's done to himself. Sam is swirling his tongue over the head of Dean's cock and slowly working his finger in a counter rhythm that's just plain criminal. He licks up the slit, then plunges back down, letting more spit dribble around Dean's balls and back, so he can slide that finger in deeper. It burns now, but Dean is beyond caring, just a mass of nerves thrusting forward and back between two searing points of heat.

Then Sam moves his finger, deep inside, and smooths the pad of it over a spot that Dean did not even know existed inside the human body.

“Again!” he gasps, still seeing dancing blots of light. He's staring blindly up at the cream-colored ceiling, hips working, hands clutching Sam's hair and the steering wheel for dear fucking life. Sam smirks around his cock, he can feel it, and oh holy baby Jesus fuck he can feel Sam hit that spot again. Dean's hips roll out of rhythm and jerk up further, deeper into Sam's throat.

“I'm – I'm gonna --” Dean pants, yanking up on Sam's hair, trying to warn him.

But Sam just hums again, and drives in on that spot, sinks down on Dean's cock, and that's it, that's all she wrote, Dean is coming his fucking brains out, his whole body locking and seizing like he's having a grand mal episode, a strangled groan forcing its way up from the depths of his gut.

He comes for what feels like days, pouring all of himself down his brother's throat, Sam swallowing as best he can. Dribbles of it run down, around, pooling where Sam's knuckle meets Dean's body, where he's shoved up inside.

Sam draws up, pulls out slowly. Dean exhales in an overwhelmed, shuddery, fucked-out gust. He's sprawled so weirdly on the seat, against the window, that he has no idea how he's going to sit up with muscles that have suddenly turned to pudding.

Then Sam starts licking.

Dean can't help his startled, over-sensitized cry when Sam's tongue starts lapping his softening skin, cleaning up the come that ran over, all the way down to his balls. Sam's hot breath fills Dean's boxer briefs and Dean is about to yank Sam up and away because too much, too much –

but Sam is warm beneath Dean's hands.

Dean traces the line of his brother's jaw. Warm. Sam's skin is flushed when he sits up and licks his lips. Dean smiles, readjusting himself, and he tries to chase Sam's eyes, but Sam is pulling away. His mouth is a thin line when he swipes at it with the back of his hand. It strikes Dean low. He cuts his own gaze to the floorboards, tucking himself back into his sodden jeans with hands that shake.

He somehow manages to swing his legs back around under the wheel. The car is still running, they're all set to go, but it feels wrong, just driving away after all of that.

Dean glances back over. Sam is sitting rigid in his seat. The hard line of his own cock is plainly visible in his jeans, just below the hem of his jacket.

“You, uh,” Dean gestures, “want some help with --”

“It's fine,” Sam says, and no, that tone of voice is all wrong. Dean stares over at him. Sam shifts, draping his arm over his thigh, as though hiding the evidence that what just happened affected him at all will make Dean magically forget.

“Just drive,” Sam says.

“Sammy --”

“Just drive, Dean,” he says, sharper this time. There's nothing Dean can say to reach him, not now.

He shifts into drive, and pulls back into the lane. The sound of the engine doesn't comfort him like it normally would. He can't help glancing back at Sam a few more times, but the tight line of Sam's jaw keeps him from opening his mouth to say anything.

*

Sam ducks into the bathroom when they get their standard, two queens. Dean hovers near his bed. He hears the water turn on and collapses like his strings have been cut, sitting heavily on the edge of the mattress.

He can't process what happened in the car. He knows _what_ happened, sure, he's a big boy, but _why_ it happened – well, no, he knows that too. Why it happened the way it _did_ , that's what eludes him. Why would Sam think he had to take what he needed that way? Did he not think Dean would be willing to help? Feeling good, confusion and feelings aside, he wants more than anything for Sam to be okay. He'd do anything toward that end. Doesn't Sam know that? Does Dean really need to say it out loud, in so many words? Or is it something more, something deeper? Sam has always been so deep, in his thoughts and processes, whereas Dean likes to think he himself is a straightforward, simple guy. As such, he's always coming up short where Sam is concerned, missing the point entirely until Sam is pissed off, or Sam gives up.

Dean's torn. Over wanting to help, and not knowing how, and wanting something else entirely. He keeps coming back to the thought that he probably did something wrong, but has no idea what it could be.

Other than touching his brother the way he's touched him, of course. Dean doesn't want to poke at that issue with any length of pole. There's fucked up, and then there's this. The only label for something like this still falls far short of what the Winchesters have managed to make of it.

Dean's considering ordering food, maybe sticking his head in the bathroom to ask if Sam would be up for a beer run, when he realizes he can hear something over the sound of running water. First disbelief, then a shimmying shock hits him, and he's moving closer to the bathroom door before he can convince himself it's a bad idea.

Slick, sound of skin on skin, in a frenzied rhythm. Harsh breathing. Sam's obviously trying to keep quiet, but he can't quite bite down on his moans the way he wants to because Dean can hear them. He can hear his brother getting off in the shower.

Normally, he'd turn around and walk back to the other side of the room. This isn't the first time he's realized Sammy's beating the meat in the one scant inch of privacy this life and these rooms can afford. Hell, ever since Sam hit puberty, Dean has been avoiding hearing more of those sounds than was ever absolutely necessary.

Now, in the face of all that's happened, Dean hears those sounds and he finds himself getting hard.

The slicks sounds speed up; Sam is straining toward the finish line, and Dean is holding his breath to hear the way his brother's catches. He can imagine Sam in there, golden yards of him soaking wet, bottom lip tugged between his teeth and bitten raw, hand a blur over his cock. Dean's held that cock, seen it, knows it's long and ruddy and when it's hard, it feels like – Dean's fingernails dig into his thighs when he realizes his own cock is straining in his stained briefs like it wants to join in.

 _This is wrong enough,_ he tells himself. _You don't get to enjoy this part. Sam gave you what you get; this is his, you don't get all of him. You don't get everything. He's making that perfectly clear._

Still, as Sam breathes even more raggedly and he whines beneath the sound of the spray, Dean finds himself giving over to the urges. He palms his cock through his jeans, swearing under his breath.

Then Sam's hand stills, he sucks in a gasp, and Dean hears a thicker liquid hitting the stall floor. Sammy's coming, nearly silently; Dean imagines blood flowing from Sam's bottom lip when he bites through it trying to keep quiet. Still, the kid doesn't manage to mask his groan entirely, a sound that ricochets off the bathroom walls and around the base of Dean's cock.

Dean shoves the heel of his hand into his hard-on and wills it down. _Not for you, not for you._

By the time Sam exits the bathroom, Dean is under control and flipping channels on the old TV like he didn't hear a thing.

*

There's something to be said for the kind of dreams a hunter has. They're pretty typically weird. Dean has had some sick ones, some fascinating ones, but he'd have to say they're all kinds of predictable when considering what he sees on a daily basis.

That being said, Dean is having one weird-ass dream.

There's snow in the room. He can see it, but he doesn't feel cold. It's blowing in through the open door, the open window, the curtains wafting lazily in a breeze that just feels like moving air. There's none of the chill, the tang of winter that usually nips at Dean's extremities. He finds himself smiling, laying there in bed, staring over at a snowdrift like it's only natural for one to be in the room.

He's utterly relaxed. That's another thing. Dean almost never relaxes completely. There's always some part of him that waits, tense, for something to go wrong. That's why he sleeps clothed with a knife or a gun under his pillow, why he sleeps on his back with one arm toward Sam. Why he sleeps in the bed nearest the door.

He's still doing all of those things, but he feels languid, unworried. There's nothing wrong here, at all. How could there be? He's staring at snow, but he's warm. He's in a bed that feels much too comfortable to belong to any motel. Sam is here; he's moving around the room, saying something about how of course there's a hunt while they're up here, how could there not be? They're Winchesters. They don't get a day off.

Dean turns his head to smile at Sam, at the way he bustles to pack up his duffel. _What's the hurry_ , he wants to say, _this bed is like a cloud. You should feel this fucking bed, Sammy_ , but his mouth doesn't want to move. His whole body feels suffused in cotton. He sighs, and snuggles further back into the mattress.

“Dean,” he hears Sam say, and he'd like to answer, but he's still sleepy. _It's okay_ , he tells himself. _Sam won't leave without you_.

“Dean, wait up!”

_Wait, what?_

Dean's eyes fly open. Sam is stuffing the last of his things into his bag, darting glances out the open door. He's smiling. “You wouldn't leave me, you ass!” he calls.

A beat passes and then he laughs, like he heard a response. Dean gapes, and then surges to sit up. He can't. He can't sit up. He's glued to the bed, arms and legs still relaxed and unresponsive. Drawing a deep breath, he tries to yell. Nothing happens.

 _Sammy_ , he mouths desperately, in what would be a scream if he could make any noise. _Sammy!_

“I'm coming, hold your goddamn horses,” Sam shouts out the door. He glances around the room, even meets Dean's wild eyes, but he doesn't see anything amiss or he wouldn't be leaving the room, pulling the door shut through snowdrifts so light they fall apart as he walks right through them.

Dean struggles against his invisible bonds, works his throat against whatever's muffling him. He pants and strains but he can't move and now it's starting to affect his sanity. He's got to get to Sammy. God knows what's actually out there, what's calling to him. What he thinks is Dean.

One more surge and he's up, like nothing was ever holding him, caught mid-twist so quickly he falls right off the edge of the bed. He leaps up, dashing toward the door. The warmth he felt in bed becomes a searing chill, the snow bites at his bare feet when he steps into it, and he yanks the room door open to squint across the parking lot.

“Sammy!” It comes out a panicked plea. He can't really fathom what he's seeing.

There's a copy of the Impala made entirely of ice idling there across from the room, steam pouring from her tailpipe, perpendicular and in stark juxtaposition to the real thing still parked where Dean put her last night. The passenger side door is open, and Sam is sliding in – but what seizes Dean's heart more than any of the rest of it put together is the ice-form copy of _himself_ in the driver's seat.

Sam is turning to that false, ice Dean and laughing, something Dean would have killed to see these last few days, and it takes the real Dean a moment, far too long, to lunge forward.

Ice Dean smirks, the door slams shut, and the false Impala roars away, throwing up nasty parking lot slurry all over Dean and his Baby.

He gets a mouthful of it when he yells Sam's name, but Sam can't hear him. As Dean watches in horror, the ice-form Impala vanishes into thin, frozen air.

Dean falls to his knees in the dirty snow.

“ _Sam!_ ”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To be concluded...


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I'd like to say that I'm very, very sorry... but this thing needed another chapter. It will absolutely end with chapter six. I know it will. I just didn't want to rush the ending, or have chapter five be five miles long.
> 
> Please don't be mad (please please) and enjoy this segment. I'll have the ending up within the next week or so.

Dean kneels in that parking lot until his knees ache, until the snow starts to melt and someone calls the manager to come ask him very cautiously if he needs some assistance. He doesn't answer. He doesn't know. He's got nothing on this one, so he wordlessly staggers back to his room and falls down on the bed.

He makes it half a minute before he needs to be moving, needs to get somewhere else and figure this out.

Sammy's gone. Sammy's gone and he didn't just leave, he was _taken_. It spins around in Dean's head in a whirlwind of seething disbelief, imminent rage. Whoever the fuck thought this was a good idea, they better enjoy this time they have left, because Dean Winchester is coming to end them.

Dean catches his reflection in the mirror behind the TV. He looks like hell, like he's been there and back, eyes dark and red and hard. The bolt of his jaw jumps as he looks. Then he's moving again.

Soon enough, he'll have his Sammy back. Someone, something, will pay. That's the way it is, the way it has to be.

*

His phone is with his wallet and knife on the nightstand, an innocuous little black plastic rectangle. Dean eyes it like it's a snake.

“No way that was a coincidence,” he mutters, remembering all those calls with Bobby, leading them all over the damn place, and nowhere helpful.

He thinks about Mir's place, Mir himself. Remembers wondering if they were being led astray.

“Fuck,” he curses sharply, and grabs the phone.

*

He places the phone just behind one of the Impala's rear wheels. It makes a satisfying crunch as he backs out.

"Fuck with _that_ ," he snarls into silence. No telling what can hear him. What's been listening this whole time.

*

He wonders, briefly, if any of it had been real. Oh, physically real, sure -- but his crises of conscience and identity, the way he'd felt -- had he or Sam really wanted any of that? Maybe Sam never did, he was just doing what he had to survive, but Dean had been sure he was feeling, well, feelings. For Sam. What if those deep and abiding currents had been nothing more than part of this awful frozen curse?

Sickened, Dean pushes those thoughts away. If he doesn't, he'll be second-guessing a whole mess of things he never really figured out to begin with. He doesn't have time for that right now.

*

Dean drives to Bobby's. He pushes the Impala to her limits, til her engine starts to whine, staring so hard down the road he's blinded. There's no tape in the cassette player. All he can hear is Sam's voice, laughingly asking if Dean's leaving without him.

But Sam was the one who left, lured away. And Dean couldn't stop him.

Washington to South Dakota is one hazy, white-out blur, and Dean makes the twenty-hour trip in fourteen. He doesn't remember the scenery, or any of the times he stopped for gas. He has no idea what speed he kept. He just knows that it never felt fast enough. Every minute he's doing anything but finding Sam, anything could be happening. Anything. Dean has to focus hard on the road and the roar of the engine to keep from imagining just what _anything_ could be.

His mind wanders, of course. He tries to confine those wanderings to Sam, memories he's cached, traceries of eyelashes and dimples, fingers and hair, that he never knew he'd focused on til now. Dean loses time this way. He'll come back to himself and fifty miles will have passed, gone in the slow-shutter blink of an eye and a half hour of watching Sammy laugh. God, if Dean ever sees that unabashed grin directed at him again, he might just burst into tears. He never thought losing Sam for good was an option. He always made sure that it wasn't. Now that the possibility is so real, hanging over him like a deepening cloud, it's too much. It forces Dean to shut down.

When he finally pulls in to Singer Salvage, the night has deepened to a rich, star-flecked tapestry over the homey jumble of junked cars. There's some old snow piled beneath a few fenders. The place is a beautiful sight. Dean blinks at it, and his eyelids stick together. The piles of cars waver. He throws Baby into park and staggers out.

The porch light flickers on. Dean hears the door creak, the sharp shock of a shotgun cocking. All he can do is stand there, weaving on his feet. He's already been shot, his body is telling him. The lack of Sam by his side is a ragged hole in his chest. Vaguely, he wonders how he's still breathing.

Then, a gruff male voice hails him: "Dean?"

Dean's lips form a wan smile. Several crunching footsteps later Bobby's concerned, grizzled face coalesces out of the tungsten glow.

"You look like hell, boy," he says, peering at Dean's face.

"Good to see you, too," Dean manages, stepping forward, and he stumbles over his own feet. Bobby drops the shotgun against the Impala, barely catches Dean's shoulders.

"What's gotten into you? Where's Sam?"

Dean snaps to at that, just a little, shaking off his stupor. "Bobby," he says abruptly, eying the older hunter, "when's the last time we talked?"

"bout a... month ago, maybe two?" Bobby is looking at him like he's crazy. Dean stares right back. "You and your brother were headed in to Boulder," Bobby says slowly. "Had a job that looked like witchcraft. You called me and told me there weren't nothing, just a wild goose chase. Ain't heard from you since."

"I never made that call," Dean says. Hunch confirmed. He groans, dragging a hand over his face. "Bobby, man, I've been talking to you this whole time." Bobby looks nonplussed. "Now, I come to find out it ain't you, and Sam is --" Dean can't meet Bobby's eyes anymore. He stares out across the darkened yard and sees an outline of his brother against the night. "Sammy, he's --"

"Sam is what, Dean?" Bobby asks, very quietly. It's obvious he's expecting Dean to say _Sam is dead_. Dean laughs, stomach clenching in sudden relief that he doesn't have to say those words just yet. If he gets his way, not ever.

"Sam's still alive, but he's gone," he says, standing up straighter, turning his head to meet Bobby's eyes again, "and I got no idea where."

*

Bobby makes him sleep. Hauls him inside, plies him with enough rum and Sleepytime tea to drug a racehorse, and leads him upstairs to the old guestroom that he and Sam used to stay in when they were kids. Dean tumbles into unconsciousness to the familiar creaking of the old house, the scents of motor oil and herbs a comforting weight in his nostrils. He sleeps so soundly that in the morning when he wakes, it's several blissful moments before his brother's absence hits him like a lead weight.

He charges down the stairs like a wild thing, pulling on his clothes from the day before with a frenzied impatience that nearly rips them. In stark contrast to his rush, Bobby is in the kitchen, leaning against the sink reading a newspaper and drinking coffee that looks like tar. It smells like heaven to Dean. He pours himself a chipped mug full, trying and failing to slow his breathing. Running a hand through his sleep-tossed hair, he winces at the greasiness. But there's no time for such petty, insignificant things as showers. He needs to be moving. Dean takes a great sip of too-hot coffee and ignores the burn on his tongue.

As tortoise before the hare, Bobby folds the newspaper, tossing it on the kitchen table. "You hear about this thing in Texas? Some kinda cartoony twister?" He sips his coffee.

"Ch'yeah," Dean huffs into his own java. "We were there."

"Y'ever figure out what it was?" Sip. His deliberate movements are starting to grate on Dean. "Sounds like a tulpa to me."

"That's what we thought." Dean turns the hot mug around in his hands. He starts to pace, tracing the old linoleum floor in a never-ending maze, trying not to think about the lack of Sam in this house and failing. "Turned out to be something else entirely, something we never did pin down. Dragged Sam from our motel to a town 'bout three hundred miles north."

Dean stops abruptly and turns on his heel, coffee sloshing over his fingers. "I gotta go, Bobby, he -- they could be anywhere by now, and he might --"

"Do you have any leads? Any clue at all?" Bobby asks, not gently. Dean claps his jaw shut. Shakes his head.

"'s what I thought. Just like your daddy, chargin' off half-cocked with no leads and less to show for it."

Dean grinds his jaw. He hates being compared to John in a negative light, but he knows Bobby has a point. Dean knows even less now than he did when he and Sam were both on this together.

His chest constricts. Who knew the lack of Sam would make it so hard to breathe?

"Well, what _do_ you know?" Bobby asks, impatient. "Since you're so all-fire ready to charge and save the day. May as well see what we're workin' with."

Dean takes a deep breath, and starts at the beginning.

A tastefully edited version, of course.

*

"Whatever this is sure spent a whole lot of time and energy makin' you think you were on the right track," Bobby says, pulling down books from dusty shelves. Dean falls into the hole in the sofa padding like he does every time he sits on it, but he's too distracted to care. Bobby says, "And it sounded like me?"

Dean nods. "Right down to the 'idjit'," he says. Bobby snorts. "It sent us all kinds of places," Dean continues. "Now it just looks like it wanted us to waste the time, but why?"

"There's all kinds'a lore," Bobby says, plunking down a heavy volume atop his paper-and-herb-strewn desk, "that talks about some spells and curses needin' specific amounts of time to gestate. Gotta be allowed to cook," he adds, sitting heavily, "or in this case, freeze."

Dean scowls. "Why just Sam, though? Why not both of us?"

"Assuming it's the coven in Boulder, what can you remember about 'em?" Bobby asks, flipping pages.

Outside, a lone bird warbles. Dean, distracted, turns to the curtained window.

"Doesn't he know it's freezing outside?"

"Some of 'em just don't care," Bobby says, yanking open a drawer. He pulls out a pad and pen, and starts scratching notes from one of the books.

"I've cared more about the cold in the past few weeks than I have in my whole life," Dean mutters. Then, louder, he says, "They were witches, man, I don't know." He picks ruefully at a hangnail. "Typical, hex bags and cauldrons, big ugly altar in a basement. They were cursing housewives in the area; we only picked up the pattern because some of the husbands got to talking at the bar about how their wives had suddenly developed these weird five-pointed rashes. Assholes thought it was an STD, they were about to start blaming the UPS guy." Dean rolls his eyes. "Milkman theory. Pricks. This ain't an episode of South Park."

Bobby snorts. "Anything else the wives had in common?"

"None of 'em died from it, all of 'em had family close by." Dean smiles lazily. "Man, I have never talked to so many closet-freak older sisters in my --"

He sits up straight.

"None of the victims were only kids. They all had brothers and sisters."

"How'd you miss that?" Bobby asks flatly.

Dean glares. "I dunno, Bobby, maybe the same way I forgot we even hunted witches until Sam fucking disappeared?"

"Powerful spell," Bobby mutters.

Dean sinks back into the sofa, dragging a hand across his face. "You're tellin' me. I feel violated."

The bird outside warbles on through the silence that mounts, until Bobby sighs.

"I hate to say this, boy, but I think you're goin' back to Boulder."

"Can I?" Dean props his chin on his hand. "The locals know our -- my face, and six women died right before I disappeared. There might be an APB out for me."

"Did you go in FBI?" Bobby asks like Dean is the stupidest thing to walk the earth.

"Well, yeah. Actually, I think it was CDC."

"Then you're fine," Bobby says impatiently. Dean hops up out of the couch crater. "Go in like it's a follow-up," Bobby tells him, "and give 'em the number if they give you any trouble. It won't be the first time I've covered your ass."

"Probably not the last, either," Dean calls, already halfway to the door.

"Hold up! Dean?"

Dean pokes his head back around the corner. "Yeah?"

"Use a landline this time," Bobby says, still annoyed. "Probably safe to say your phone is included in this mother of all hexes."

"Gotcha," Dean says. He doesn't bother adding that his phone is dust in a parking lot. "Anything else?"

"Try to keep from gettin' arrested. Idjit."

*

Boulder is just as big as it was weeks ago, rising up before the Rockies, a jewel-encrusted tapestry strewn at the feet of a sleeping giant. Dean eases the Impala into the heart of the city. Everything he passes is bleached of color; not because Boulder is any less vibrant than it was, but because this time Dean has no reason to care about colors. Without Sam on the seat beside him, everything fades to muted grays.

Dean finds a motel and parks smoothly, sliding out and heaving in a deep breath of crisp, clean air. Shaking off the stiffness of the drive, he strolls into the office and asks for two queens by default.

It isn't until he's in the room and staring at them that he realizes his mistake.

It hits him like a sledgehammer, reopening the hole in his chest. _Sam isn't here. Sam won't be here ever again if you don't get off your ass and find him, save him, somehow_ . The need to keep moving, to _do something_ resonates too loudly in Dean's skull, and he tosses his duffel on to the bed he usually takes so hard it bounces right back off.

A split-second decision takes him to a package store, and then he's sitting down on that bed and cracking open a pint of Jameson. The pint disappears down his throat in, oh, seven gulps? Dean isn't counting. He's waiting for the numbness, the part where his brain shuts down for the night in the face of so much blanketing chemical.

What else is liquor best for, but forgetfulness?

The pint is not enough. Dean knew it wouldn't be, but he didn't want to go into this in the morning all hungover and useless. That being said, his brain is still on, still focused on _Sammy_ and g _otta find your fucking brother, Dean, you lump. Get the fuck out there and find him_ , it screams, so he swipes around his feet and finds the 24 pack of Budweiser he picked up just in case.

He wonders briefly how many of them he'll pound before he passes out.

*

4 down and they're tangoing with the whiskey through his system. Dean turns on the TV, flips through a few channels, and turns it off again.

*

7 down. It's hot in here. Dean strips out of his T-shirt and jeans, and curls up on his side atop the polyester comforter. He stares at the pattern of golden bees on a yellow background until the bees start to blur. They almost look like they could be buzzing around his head. He traces a few with a blunt-nailed finger.

The quiet in the room compounds until he's picking out every outside noise he can, passing traffic, slamming doors, just so he can escape the vacuum left by the lack of someone else breathing.

His stomach growls, too loud in the stillness.

Maybe he should order a pizza.

*

Dean answers the knock on his door in his boxers, his tenth beer in hand. He's starting to weave something fierce, but still manages the pizza-for-money hand off without tipping anything on to the floor.

The delivery boy – man, really, looks to be around Dean's own age – eyes him with something in the gaze that Dean can't read. “You okay, dude?” he asks, his voice a low clip.

“Yeah,” Dean answers airily, waving the hand with the beer. “M' fine.”

He still feels too hot. Maybe that's the pizza in his hand. Or maybe it's the pizza man's eyes trailing down the center of his chest to where his boxers ride too low, exposing a thatch of dark hair.

Dean briefly entertains a universe where he invites this guy in. He's drunk enough for that to be nothing but hot. Maybe they fuck on the floor, rug burn on knees and elbows and one unfortunate ass. Maybe one or both of them gets his rocks off.

But.

“Keep the change,” Dean mumbles, and shuts the door.

He falls more than sits on the bed with his food, tilting back his beer for the last few drops. The bottle hits the floor, but it sounds very far away. His eyelids feel heavy. He's hungry, though, so hungry. He flips open the lid and stares down into the bounty of pizza before him.

Each blink is longer than the last.

*

Dean is lifting a third slice of cheesy, meaty heaven to his lips when movement catches the corner of his eye. His reflexes are slightly dulled by all the booze, but it still only takes him half an instant to whirl around and face --

Sam. Sam is sitting on what would have been his bed, barely denting the pristine bee comforter.

The half-eaten pizza slice falls back in the box. Dean swallows noisily. "Sammy?" he gasps when he can, hoarse.

"Hey, Dean."

Sam's voice is slightly hollow, but Dean doesn't care. "What -- how?"

Sam smiles. It's sort of vacant. "I found you, big brother. I didn't think I'd be able to. You left, and I had to track you."

"On foot? Wait, what took you? Did you kill it?"

"No, I didn't kill it," Sam says distantly. He turns his head to stare across the room, and to Dean's horror the front of Sam's neck gapes open, red folds twisting beneath his chin. "I never got the chance."

Dean's going to be sick. He's -- he stares at Sam, at the mortal wound. He sees it now, the dried gush of crimson all down his brother's front, splashed across the thighs of his jeans, splotched in such a way that tells Dean far too clinically that _Sam was on his knees when he died_.

 _No_ . Shaking his head, gut churning, Dean shoves his flooded brain through the facts. _You're asleep right now_ , he tells himself, _that's gotta be it_. "You're just part of the spell," he says slowly, shifting atop his own bee comforter, a little bit further away from Sam.

"How do you figure?" Sam looks curious. "Because I'm dead?" Dean flinches. "Because there's no universe in which you can lose me? People die all the time, dude. We deal with the aftermath just about every day. Our lives revolve around death. Why am I, are we, untouchable?"

"Because," Dean says numbly. He can't voice the rest of the reasons swarming him, clamoring against the knot in his chest. _Because you're Sam, you're my brother, we're supposed to be in this together, forever. You and me against the world. I never told you._

 _I never told you_.

Sam is smiling sadly, and it's a knowing smile. It looks wrong. Dean wants to knock it from those bloodless lips. "You can't always get what you want," he says.

Dean snorts. "Don't you quote the Stones at me, Sam." He can't give this specter a nickname. Not when it's not his Sammy. No way. Dean scoots, and shoves up off the bed, staggering over to where he's left his duffel on the threadbare chair. "You never liked my music anyh--"

He whirls around, canister of salt poised to cast in an arc at Sam's bed, but the ghostly Sam is gone. Dean frowns. Treating this like a hunt, it's never that easy.

The booze still churning sluggishly through his system makes him sway, then, and he nearly drops the salt when cold lips meet his ear.

"You'll never find my body," Sam whispers.

Dean jerks around, slams salt into empty air.

"You've failed," his brother murmurs roughly in his other ear. Salt strikes nothing.

"Stop this," Dean growls. He's breathing hard, sweating. He's not begging, not yet, but pleas are welling up in his throat, making it tight. "Just stop."

"You're going to lose," Sam says from nowhere, and this time Dean would swear his brother's voice is entwined with another tone, one more feminine, sinister.

"You," he roars pointedly, shaking a circle of salt around himself, the grains piling into the dark green carpet, "are the loser here, sister."

Sam flashes in to view inches from the salt line. "I'm your brother, Dean." Blood bubbles thickly from the mess of his throat.

"You're a figment," Dean snaps, "and I will find the bitch who thinks this is funny. And when I do," he howls at the ceiling, "I will scatter her fucking ashes to the winds!"

"Just try, little man," a thin voice whispers, dripping venom, and then Dean is alone. He feels it, the absence of a presence, another developed hunter's skill. It barely registers beyond the pounding in his pulse points, the rush of blood in his ears.

"I will fucking _end_ you," he promises the thing tormenting him, even though it's gone for now. Slowly, aching, he curls up inside the salt circle and focuses on his breathing until his heartbeat slows.

In, and out. _Oh god, Sammy --_

In, and out.

_I will find you._

*

Dean wakes up briefly, surrounded by the smell of cheap Italian, and barely recognizes that his pillow is a large meat lovers' with extra cheese before he's falling back down into black.

*

The wake-up call he'd requested is an air-raid siren. It rings, and Dean flails, falling right off the bed and into a mess on the carpet, cold pizza and cardboard and beer. He narrowly misses braining himself on the remaining bottles, still staunchly upright in their case.

There's cheese and cold knobbly toppings stuck to his face. Dean claws at the mess, flinging it to the ground as he scrambles up, lunges, grabs at the phone to make it _stop_. “Ugh,” he says into the wrong end.

It's a recording, some far too cheerful female voice reminding him that he asked to be reminded to wake up. Dean's head is home to some mining gnomes, chipping away at his skull with lasers and heavy machinery. He tells the recorded lady to go fuck herself with a stick and slams the receiver back in the cradle.

He feels like the worst human being alive. He feels like failure.

The midnight visit slams into him atop his hangover, and he glances around wildly. No salt, anywhere. It was a dream? _It was a dream_ , he tells himself with increasing giddiness. _Sam is alive. I knew, I knew the bitch was full of shit_. "Knew it," he mutters, dragging a hand over his face.

When he goes to pull the day's clothes from his duffel, he pulls aside a shirt to reveal the stuffed orca, staring indolently up at him with one glinting, black eye.

"Shut up," Dean snaps. "I never doubted for a second."

Julio Finn just lies there, his fuzzy body contoured to the edge of the bag and all of Dean's clothes. Dean feels a little more like an idiot, but the sight is comforting. He zips the whale back in, gives the bag a pat. Miami is good memories. Maybe he and Sam should head back there when all of this is done, just so Sam can be too warm for once in too long and Dean can finally get him drunk on some primo tequila.

Yeah. That'd be nice.

Dean's hot shower feels like waking up for the very first time. By the time he hits a nearby diner for some black coffee and eggs, he is smiling. It feels vindictive, and vicious, but it's there.

He walks back to the car through the sunshine, each step a word in the mantra of _Sam is alive, I will find him, and I'm gonna gank a bitch_. Over and over he thinks it until he catches sight of himself in the rearview mirror, teeth bared in a gleeful snarl.

"Let's go figure out some witches, Sammy," he rasps to the empty passenger seat.

 _Sounds like a plan_ , his brother replies. Dean can almost hear him.

*

He doesn't remember the house number, so he stops in the local library to use their white pages. He flirts absently with the librarian, who seems just as scatterbrained as he feels. On a hunch, he visits the Reference section, and finds the local newspaper for that week in November. The obits are comforting; all six witches are definitely dead.

Dean still stashes a switchblade in his jacket before he drives to the house where they died.

*

The house belongs to Tim (and also, formerly, Lori) McCullough, and the lawn still hasn't been mowed. Prickly travelers from the weeds catch on Dean's suit trousers and shoelaces as he strides up the walk. He knocks authoritatively on the painted wood of the front door, ignoring the bell and the ornate knocker like he did last he was here. This time, it's Lori McCullough's husband who answers. He looks pale, drawn, still not recovered from the events of November.

Seeing the corpses of six women scattered around a satanic altar will do that to you. If you're not, you know, a Winchester.

"Tim McCullough?" Dean asks briskly, even though he knows who the man is. "I'm Ames Eckman, with the CDC. Just need a few minutes of your time."

Tim frowns. "What does the CDC want with --"

"We're doing a controlled follow-up of the events that took place in November, Mister McCullough," Dean says, smoothing right over him. "I need to ask you a few questions."

In truth, he doesn't care what the man says. He barely registers what he himself says. Tim leads him inside, to the overstuffed couch in the living room, and Dean's sharp eyes flick around the room every time Tim looks away. He catalogs every incongruous detail, not that there are many. There's been no discernible changes made since he was last in this house. From the looks of things, Tim hasn't even cleaned.

Dean wishes he could ask to see the basement. He wonders if the police took all the items from the altar, if blood still stains the walls. The witches put up a hell of a fight, but they weren't particularly powerful. They defended themselves with knives and a shotgun, not spells. Sam and Dean finished the job and escaped with only a few scratches apiece.

"Pardon the nature of these next few questions, Mister McCullough," Dean says, pretending to care about this man's obviously fragile state of mind for the sake of answers, "but we have to be thorough. When your wife was found --"

"I already told the police all of this, it's on their report," Tim blurts. "Get it from them."

If Dean wasn't already well aware that the man knows nothing, that right there would pique his interest. As it is, though.

"I have the police reports," Dean lies smoothly. "That's why I'm here. There are details that the CDC --"

"My wife and her friends were _murdered_ ," Tim McCullough spits. "They didn't die of some _disease_. If you need... details, you need to get them from the police, and leave me the he--"

Dean interrupts him. "Your wife had a sister, correct?" He remembers now. He read in the obituary, _survived by her husband, Tim McCullough, and sister, Ysa Thompson_.

"Yes..." Tim says, suspicious. "What does that have to do --"

"They weren't close?"

"She hated her," Tim says. He doesn't say which one hated which, but Dean knows. He stands, turns to the door.

"Thank you for your assistance, Mister McCullough. You won't hear from us again."

"What does the CDC have to do with -- you were investigating those rashes, right?" Tim follows him to the door, houndong him. "What does that have to do with my wife?"

"Nothing, or something. No idea," Dean says with a shrug. "I just go where they send me."

He leaves an unsatisfied Tim hovering on the front stoop, still spouting questions, and slides into the car. This whole thing revolves around siblings. Dean has no doubt that if he asks, he'll discover that all six witches had at least one.

Thing is, he couldn't be less interested in asking.

"Break into the station, or County records?" he mutters to the steering wheel as he pulls from the curb.

 _Records will have fewer security measures_ , Sam's voice tells him. _Quicker in and out, and then we'll know_.

"County it is." Dean nods, flexing his fingers around the wheel. "What to do til then?..."

He imagines Sam stretching to fill the space in the passenger seat, knees knocking against the glove box, back arching against the leather. _See what we can find out at the library?_

Dean puts the car in gear as Sam continues, _I know you hate libraries, but you were already in there once today, and there might be public information there that'll patch some of the -- Dean, are you even listening to me?_

Blinking, Dean realizes he's been sitting at a stop sign for the past minute or so, staring out along the asphalt. He'd been so focused on Sam's voice as he remembers it that he tuned out the actual words.

And as good an idea as he realizes the library is, he also realizes that he's hearing his brother's voice a little too clearly. Dean darts a glance to the passenger seat. Still empty. "A dream was one thing," he tells himself wearily, flicking on the turn signal and easing off the gas, "but this is a little closer to crazy."

 _A little?_ Sam would have teased.

"Okay, a lot," Dean answers him, unthinking. He groans. "I am so fucked."

He bypasses the library and heads back to the motel, planning to ditch the monkey suit and find some hole where the beer is cheap and the pool is played by idiots. A good hustle is just what he needs to feel sane, and if he gets to fight some dumb guy or two? Even better.

*

Ten o'clock at night. Dean works the lockpick and screwdriver with steady hands. He's seven hundred dollars richer, his knuckles don't even really ache from the punches he had to throw on his way out of the bar, and he's managed to silence his brother's voice in his head for the past eight hours. He feels good.

County records only has a limited camera system and an ADT alarm that Dean bypasses easily with two clamps and a redundant wire. He's got his penlight between his teeth and is flipping through a file cabinet when Sam speaks up again.

_I feel like I've heard that name before: Thompson._

"s a common-ass name, Sammy," Dean mutters around the light. He slides the cabinet shut and opens the next. Three files down, three to go. Of course there's not a 'Murdered' section. They're filed alphabetically in the 'Deceased Persons' room. A whole room, nothing but dead people. And Dean has to remember six of their names. "And not one we're looking for," he adds to the empty room, "so not helping."

 _It's the name of Lori McCullough's sister,_ Sam says. _Ysa Thompson?_

"So?" Dean hisses. He sighs angrily. "Stop talking to yourself, fucking hell --"

The Sam-voice is persistent. _Wasn't one of the witches hyphenated? Thompson-Something?_

Dean pulls that file out. "Thompson-Styles," he whispers incredulously. There it is in black and white. It hadn't clicked because the whole name had always run together in his head, something like _tomsonstyles_. "Do you think --"

 _Are they all related?_ Sam's surprise is a little ripple of pain for Dean. He's imagining this whole interaction far too well. He presses the heels of his free hand into one of his eyes. "God..." he groans. "Shut up."

_But they are, Dean, look!_

Dean flips the file open. Rina Thompson-Styles kept her maiden name along with adopting her partner's surname when she entered into a civil union with Cheryl Styles. Another one of their witches.

"Fuck me," Dean breathes.

He reaches to flip through another of the files, but headlights sweep through the closed blinds behind him and he remembers where he is.

In mere moments he's gathered the folders and slipped into the copy room. Thankfully, the machine is a newer model, and it's only five minutes more before he's placing everything back the way it was and removing himself from the premises.

Sam's voice in Dean's head is blessedly silent the whole drive back.

*

Dean uses the other bed to spread out the files, and as he scans them the connection becomes clear as a cloudless day.

"Six dead Thompson sisters." Well, if you count by blood _and_ marriage. He stares down at the paperwork. Is it really that simple? "How the hell did we not see this?"

 _We weren't looking at their families_ , Sam pipes up helpfully.

Dean growls at the empty air. "God, shut up!"

 _You're the one craving conversation_ , Sam says. _You're just imagining what I'd be saying if I were here to say it._

Dean knows that's true. It happened a few times after Sam ran away to Stanford. They weren't as close then as they are now, though, so he was able to move past it and live his life.

Now, with John dead and life all gone to hell, especially in the past few weeks, Dean has never felt so alone without his brother. His inability to cope with this of all things galls him, but shouldn't surprise him. Not in the least.

 _Dad did love to say we were too close, there for a bit,_ Dean thinks. _Well, what did the old man expect? Moving all around the damn place, never any time to settle down, who the fuck else was I supposed to attach to?_

 _It's always been_ \-- The revelation hits him like that demon-driven semi. _Shit. It's_ always _been me and Sammy_.

He's always known, but now that it strikes him in context, Dean finds himself at a complete loss.

He forces his attention back to the files. "How many survivors?" he asks aloud, the force of the sound in previously empty air distracting him from panic. Dean searches for the answer himself, pointedly focusing away from what he thinks Sam would say about it.

The names jump out again and again. Ysa Thompson, and a brother, Michael. The brother's last known address was in the Netherlands as of three years ago, but Ms. Ysa lives just over an hour away in Winter Park.

Dean knows he's looking for Ysa. He wants to punch the air and declare war, but he's not about to say the name out loud, not after all she's been able to do to him so far. It would be incredibly foolish to invoke a being that powerful. _But she's still just a witch_ , Dean thinks vindictively. _I can shoot a fucking witch_.

And tomorrow, he will.

*

He circles the bed with salt, but still fully expects some version of Sam to visit his dreams.

He doesn't expect this Sam to plead with him to end it, bloody hands struggling to hold his stomach together. There's blood everywhere, spilling over his hands, bubbling at the corners of his mouth. He coughs, and it turns into a keen of pain that Dean would have given his soul not to hear. It's too real, too realistic. Dean squeezes his eyes shut against it, but he can't block out his brother's shaking voice. "It hurts, Dean... oh god, it hurts," Sam sobs. "Kill me, please." He coughs and whines again. "Kill me!"

Dean rolls over on his other side, and lets the pillow catch his tears.

He loses track of the time that passes; some minutes or hours later the bed dips behind him. He's still asleep, he knows he is. Sam feels warm, draping himself over Dean. He smells familiar, alive, inviting. He nuzzles into Dean's neck, one hand worming under Dean's shirt to caress him. Dean holds himself rigidly still.

"You know what I need," not-Sam purrs, nipping at Dean's earlobe. "Won't you give me what I need?"

 _Shouldn't have slept_ , Dean thinks wildly. His body is so tense it thrums beneath the specter's weight. _Needed to sleep but God, fuck, shouldn't have gone to sleep --_

"Dean," Sam wheedles.

Dean holds his breath, no time to think. He drags the knife out from under his pillow and stabs it through his own hand.

He snaps awake on the edge of a howl. It peters out into a confused, hollow whimper, and he sinks back into the mattress. There's no blood. Residual pain, the chill of loss, but Dean is alone and physically unharmed.

Mentally, he's flayed.

Dragging himself to a sitting position, Dean turns the knife over and over, one hand to the other. To drive now, or drive at first light.

He doesn't suppose it matters. He won't be sleeping regardless.

*

Dawn finds him parking outside a gated neighborhood. Deer Glen, it's called. They're always Deer This, Hunter's That. Prey and predator. Dean can't imagine a more fitting analogy but then, all that's on his mind is Sam and how badly Dean wants to gank the bitch that has him.

All the houses look the same, cookie-cutter reproductions. Dean's slightly disgusted with the designer. It makes finding the right house that much more mind-numbingly tedious, all of them identical on a grid of streets, but at least the numbers are prominent on the pristine metal mailboxes. Dean finds number 852 butted up to the man-made woods at the back of the lot, because of course.

 _Taking all bets_ , Dean thinks, his lip curled in a sneer. _Lair in the woods, or tunnels under the house?_

He's thinking tunnels. Easier access. He breaks in silently around back, stepping into a pristine, modern kitchen. Not like he ever really expects entrails and evidence of Black Masses, but it's always slightly anticlimactic to enter a witch's house and be confronted with Martha Stewart Living. He treads through, frowning. Basement, basement... ah. Here we go.

The basement door has well-oiled hinges. Dean approves. He keeps his steps light as a thief's treading down, down into the dark. It looks like a normal basement when he flicks his Zippo -- laundry machines, a treadmill, an old TV.

It takes three passes over all the walls before Dean finds the tiny, archaic symbol. It's been hastily hidden behind a pile of clothes beside the dryer.

He tears the machine away from the wall, and lets the echos of clanging metal die away.

There's a hole there, and it's growing. Not eating into the wall, or disrupting space-time. More like the cinder block has developed a mouth and it's yawning. Vaguely disturbed, Dean waits until it's big enough, then ducks in. A tunnel slopes away down, curving as it retreats. Like being swallowed, he thinks in spite of himself. He flicks the Zippo closed.

No ambient light in the hole, so Dean feels his way with light touches. Dirt comes away in soft puffs on his fingertips. He walks a ways, he'd estimate half a mile beneath those man-made woods, before he notices the tunnel ahead of him growing softly brighter.

The smell has changed, too. What started out dry and slightly starchy has subtly morphed into wet and loamy, something out of an ancient forest with oaks older than time itself. Dean stops when he realizes the change, and analyzes the air. The results are almost oxymoronic. The scents promise warmth, comfort, an old green place of rest, while the temperature is chilly enough to raise gooseflesh on Dean's arms through three good layers.

He's on the right track, then. Good.

Dean takes another step forward, and something drips on him from the tunnel roof. "Augh!" he exclaims softly, running a hand over his hair. Drip, drip. He darts forward, one of the droplets running down his neck. He peers up at the barely visible ceiling. "What the --"

Splat. Right between the eyes. Poleaxed, Dean staggers into the wall of the tunnel, dragging at his face. "Nrrg," he grumbles, barely audible. Still, when the small sound dies away, he realizes he can hear a faint sort of humming, clanking... machinery?

He moves forward, trying to ignore the drip between his shoulder blades as it seeps into his henley.

*

The tunnel ends abruptly, abutting a room almost too large to exist underground. Its floor is tiled in the same parquet patten as was Mir's conservatory. Dean's lips press in a grim line. He knew that guy, that place, felt wrong.

This room, though, this room is wrong in a different way. If Mir's felt just slightly off, then this place is almost entirely displaced. Like Dean is standing in another dimension. The same sourceless, ambient light that lit the conservatory illuminates this cavern as well, and a solid stone labyrinth whose mouth stands limned in wrought iron just ten or so steps away.

Speaking of mouths --

Dean whirls around just as the tunnel gulps closed behind him.

Great. Nowhere to go but forward. And forward looks like _so_ much fun.

 _Sammy. This is for Sammy_ , Dean firmly reminds himself. _Witches, mazes, there's probably even a Minotaur..._

Squaring his shoulders, he starts into the maze, the gates rising ominous on either side. The stone walls of the labyrinth look ancient, gray and crumbling, but they could just as easily have been erected yesterday. They could even be an illusion.

Dean pokes one with the tip of a finger, then smacks it with his palm. Solid, and chilly. Real as it gets.

"Well," Dean says to himself, "how's this for thinkin' outside the box?" He runs his hands up one ornate gate, grips, and begins to climb.

He hauls himself up to the top of the walls and crouches there, surveying. The maze stretches on for a depressingly long distance, snaking away into thick mists. There's no telling what could be lurking in there, or how far beyond Dean's view it'll stretch. If modern cinema has taught him anything, it's that these walls can shift or disappear at any moment. His best bet is to --

 _Wait_. "Wait," Dean says. "What the fuck am I doing?"

His boots smack sharply on the tile when he jumps down. "Hey!" he barks to the mist-shrouded ceiling. "A fuckin' maze? Really?" Dean spins in place slowly, eyes sharp. "You wanna waste my time, why don't you get down here and waste it to my face?"

For a long moment, nothing happens.

Then the stone walls vanish.

The lights go out.

Dean's heart pounds thickly. One, two, three --

A spotlight clanks on, yards away, illuminating a figure that Dean would know anywhere. Hands in his pockets, Sam is long and lanky and perfect, and Dean's thigh muscles tense to start running.

But Dean doesn't move.

"We've done the dream sequence, bitch of the west," Dean snarls into the blackness around him. "I'm not falling for that shit twice."

"I should have known you'd be so clever." Sam's lips move, but the voice is a throaty feminine purr, and the combination is so wrong it hurts. Dean glances away from the sight.

The next words are spoken from a distance greatly reduced: "But are you as quick on your feet?" Dean's reflexes jerk him back out of the reach of Sam's arm as Sam swipes forward with a wickedly curved knife. Thank fuck for all those training sessions with only his brother for an opponent. He knows Sam's reach, his limits. He can survive this.

Not to say it's going to be easy. Sam's got a reach on him like a mutant spider monkey.

"This is actually fun!" the witch squeals, laughing, using the false Sam's throat. Another swipe with the knife, and Dean ducks back again. Swipe, dodge. The spotlight follows them, glaring down from nowhere, the only light at all. There's no telling how large this room actually is. Dean knows she's leading him somewhere, probably into a trap, but all he can do is duck the swings and keep her talking. Despite the wrongness of this Sam's incongruous voice, his wild dead eyes, he's still _Sammy_. And Dean can't tear Sam apart.

"Do you think he knows he's your greatest weakness?" the witch challenges with Sam's lips, pressing in again. "That you can't lift a finger to save him if it means hurting his doppelganger?"

Dean dodges around a wide swipe and starts backing in the other direction. "He knows I love him," he says simply. It strikes him what he's said, what it means, but he's too busy dancing out of the false Sam's reach to dwell on it. The witch, however, laughs high and shrill.

"He knows? Are you sure?" There's a, shit, a wall at Dean's back out if nowhere and the witch presses in with the blade, Sam's eyes snapping. "Have you ever told him?"

The eyes look wrong. Dean can't really look at them anymore. He focuses on the recreated mole on Sam's cheek as the thing leans closer.

"Do you think he'll accept your love?"

Dean's breath catches.

"Ah," the witch purrs. "Didn't think of that, did we? How wrong it is? How base and ugly this thing between you could be considered? How can you tell him, knowing he may turn you down?"

The false Sam's breath smells like freezer burn and motor oil. "Knowing he may _leave?_ "

Steel at his throat. Dean's never been more sure. "I'm gonna tell him today," he says, "just as soon as I'm done with _you_." On that last, vicious emphasis, he stabs upward into the false Sam's side with his switchblade, digging deep.

Howling in rage and pain, it staggers. Dean slips out of its grasp. "Tickles, don't it?" he chuckles, and now freed, he pulls the gun from his waistband.

The false Sam is bleeding black. Dean thinks he can kill it, now.

It spits a mouthful on to the parquet. "You wanna dance?" the witch's voice sneers.

"I brought a gun to a knife fight," Dean says, calm, his brows pointedly raised. "There's not gonna be much dancing."

A feint to the left, and the lanky body charges, cutting a zig-zagging path on its way to Dean. Dean sights, waits, and puts one right between its eyes at point blank range. It's just as terrible as he thought it might be, seeing the little hole in Sam's forehead, but the eyes that go blank are the wrong shade of hazel and sometimes, you gotta take the bitter with the sweet.

The specter drops like a marionette, slumping down on to the floor. Its knife clatters over the tile.

"Aw, Dean, why did you break my toy?" the witch whines, from somewhere in the black around him.

Dean doesn't answer. He wishes he could orient himself. There's gotta be another part to this, closer to the witch herself. Something that's less about playing games and more about survival.

If he can get her to fear for her own life, she may just slip up.

He breathes in deeply, filling his lungs. On the gush of his exhale, he picks a direction, and runs out of the spotlight.

It tries to follow him. He can feel the warmth of it on his back. The temperature drops as he runs, and Dean grins despite the chill putting an ache in his teeth.

"What are you doing?" the witch asks, disembodied. She sounds mystified. "I can keep you in the dark forever."

She could, but she can't. Dean's figured her out. With the warmth of the spotlight on his heels as a baseline, he follows the dropping temperature.

"All right, stop," the witch says.

Dean keeps running, shifting his path by minute degrees.

 _"Stop!"_ she shrieks.

Dean speeds up.

Suddenly, it isn't dark anymore. It's -- Dean gapes up, up at a towering tangle of frozen trees, flowers and vines draped delicately on and on in a massive sprawl that deepens to black, no end in sight. It's Mir's conservatory, wildly overgrown, immobile and crackling faintly. All of the flora is tinged blue, as though it's _made_ of ice and not simply frozen. A languid mist crawls over the ground.

"I hope you're happy," the witch says from everywhere, with a hint of a sneer. "This is where you're going to die."

"Haven't died yet," Dean mutters. He shifts the gun to his right hand. The left, he sheaths entirely in his sleeves. His temperature is up from the run, his breath leaving him in thick clouds, but he knows that won't last forever. Better use it while he can.

He strides forward, letting the frozen plants catch on his jacket instead of any bare skin.

*

It's utterly silent in this forest, the odd melancholy snap of ice from somewhere around him the only wayward sound. No footsteps, nothing encroaching. No lonely birdsong. Just Dean, his own breaths, his own heartbeat.

His sniffs when his nose starts to run.

He's waded in without a map, or compass, but he feels like he knows where he's going. The chill is pervasive, almost weighty, but as he moves in deeper Dean would swear he's chasing a tendril of warmth. Somewhere in this mess another heart is beating, blood still flowing, and Dean would bet his own arm that it's Sam.

 _I'm comin', Sammy_ , he promises.

Something cold slides up his neck.

Not down _into_ his collar, but up _from_ it, as though the frozen vine now trying to strangle him grew right out of his shirt. Dean drops his gun to struggle with it, and it's like trying to keep from being strangled by dry ice. It burns his skin wherever it touches, most of all his hands. He imagines he can hear it hissing in contact with his skin. Still, he hacks at it, scrabbling, digging in with his fingernails, and bit by frozen bit it comes away.

Then two more lash out from the tangle and encircle his wrists, pulling his hands away from his throat.

Dean lets out a wordless roar of rage, struggling. He pulls, and the vines give a little, enough to let him stagger forward a step or two. Then he feels them around his ankles, too. Immobilizing. Searing his limbs with the cold.

"Sammy!" he screams, yanking and twisting, trying in vain to free himself. "Sammy, goddamnit, where are you?"

He almost misses it. A lump of something he'd taken for undergrowth, there just past an enormous frozen flower. It moves. Flakes of frost shiver off of it, and settle on the surrounding ground.

"Sam?" Dean calls. The vines all tighten at once; the witch must have gasped. It's Sam, Dean knows it is. "Sammy!"

The lump moves again, slowly unfolding, revealing arms and legs and a shaggy mop of hair. He's covered in ice from head to toe, shivering back into full consciousness, but he raises his head and even from this distance, Dean can see his eyes. His incredulous, dimpled smile.

"Dean?" Sam croaks.

It's really him. _Jesus fuck, it's really him!_

"Ha!" Dean crows, struggling anew against the vines. "I fuckin' knew you were alive!"

Sam pulls himself upright, sitting and then standing, hunched over and clearly weak. His eyes dart around and he holds his arms defensively, obviously expecting vines to lash out at him, too. When none come, he steps toward Dean. The grimace when his foot connects is pain Dean feels as well. "You can do it," Dean encourages. "You got this."

"Every part of me is asleep," Sam says, and the complaint in his voice is still music to Dean's ears.

"As well should _you_ still be," interrupts an annoyed female voice, and both brothers' heads whip toward the sound just in time to see a lithe brunette fling her fingers in Sam's direction.

Sam drops like a stone.

"No!" Dean screams, struggling. "Sam!"

"Shh," the witch hushes. "You weren't supposed to get this far. Why don't you take heart in the fact that he's alive? It'll make it that much sweeter when I kill you both."

"What in the fuck is your problem, lady?" Dean spits.

"Oh," she says, "you mean besides you having murdered six of my siblings?" She's meandering closer. Something about her eyes doesn't sit right with the rest of her face. It isn’t until she's close enough to touch him that Dean realizes he's seeing blue eyes in Lori McCullough's face, and Lori's eyes were brown.

"Yeah," he sneers. "Besides that."

She spins away with a huff of disgust, and flings over her shoulder, "You know, for being so pretty, you sure are an asshole, Dean Winchester."

"Thank you, thank you very much," he drawls, a la Elvis.

The witch snorts.

"But seriously, bitch, what's up with this?" Dean waves his arms as best he can, encompassing the frozen forest, but he means so much more. "Enchantments, illusions, a fucking curse? Why not just have us slip on a patch of frost and be done with it?"

"Because that would not have been fun," she says simply. "Don't ask questions you already know the answers to."

"I don't know the answer," Dean snaps. "I have no fucking clue why you decided a curse on Sam that did what it did was the fucking solution. I would like you to fucking enlighten me."

The witch -- Ysa, Dean remembers, her name is Ysa -- stares off into the tangle of icy plants. She dwells for a good long while before she answers. Long enough for the places where the ice vines hold Dean to start itching something fierce.

Soon, he'll be going numb. Better hurry this up.

He opens his mouth, but Ysa beats him to it. "What's it like, being loved by your brother?" she asks quietly.

"Ah --" Dean starts. "Aha," he says intelligently. So many ways to answer that. Ysa smirks, like she knows what he's thinking.

"Dirty boy."

Of course she knows. She probably watched.

"Skeevy peeper," Dean grumbles.

"Wouldn't you have watched two sisters?" she returns cattily. Dean snaps his mouth shut.

Ysa laughs. "As well I thought. Get off your high horse, Winchester. You're no better than me." Before he can snarl a retort, she adds, "But I'm serious. What's it like?"

Dean remembers Tim McCullough saying, _"She hated her."_ He blinks at Ysa. "You mean all of this was just because you -- what was it, some kind of unrequited Flowers in the Attic type deal? You just wanted big sis to touch you?"

"No!" Ysa shouts, sounding scandalized. "I just wanted them to _love_ me. They never cared what I said or did, never gave me any thought at all. You, you're Sam's whole world, and the worst part is that when I looked I could see that _you don't even care._ That boy would die without you, and you take him for granted."

"Die without -- he spent almost four years without me!"

"And he hated every second of it," Ysa says, like she's importing some great wisdom.

"He had a _girlfriend_ ," Dean says slowly.

Ysa leans in closer. "She used to peg him."

Dean recoils.

The witch laughs. "Oh, and that's too much? What about what you've been doing to not-so-little Sammy yourself, Dean? The old rub and tug? Like that's so saintly."

"Don't you call him that," Dean growls. He's had about enough of this, but he's good and trussed. No knife, no gun. All he can do, besides run his mouth, is listen.

Ysa looks like she knows it, too, and she's on a roll. "You two," she chuckles throatily, "you took sharing body heat to new extremes, didn't you? My goodness, I found a whole new definition for 'lava hot'." She licks her lips. "Mm, did I."

She circles Dean, ducking under the vines, eying him like a steak. "I'm almost sad that I won," she says. "I was enjoying sending you boys all over the country, needing one another. I would have liked to see what you did with all this maturing you've been doing, Dean. You might've even learned something."

Dean's had about enough of this bitch's posturing. "Look, Sabrina --"

"Oh, a '90s daytime TV reference, how very you," she sneers. "It's _over_. You probably haven't even noticed how numb you're getting, have you?"

He hadn't, but now that she mentions it, he does feel pretty tired. His limbs hang heavy in the vines' searing chill, which he barely feels anymore. Shit, that's not good. Dean squares his shoulders against the tug, feeling bones and ligaments grind in protest.

"Your lips are blue," Ysa continues, oblivious. Dean rotates his hips, works his knees, trying to restore some feeling to his legs. "Sam, over there?" the witch says. "I don't think he's breathing. You've lost, Winchester. Give it up."

"You... _Hah_..."

Dean's whole body surges with warmth at the sound of that familiar voice. What he sees over Ysa's shoulder is amazing. Sam, blue as Paul Bunyan's bull, is struggling upright.

"Sammy," Dean breathes.

Sam stands, tall and proud as he's able, icicles clattering to the ground from all over his shivering body. He's grasping what looks, to Dean, like one long-ass ice pick, straight handle with a vicious point.

Never mind that the situation is dire. Never mind Sam's shoulders are shaking so hard they might fall off. He's a beautiful sight, and were this not a life or death situation, Dean would tell him so.

Gripping his impromptu weapon, Sam faces the witch and says, as firmly as he's able, "You haven't beaten us yet."

 

 

 

_Stay tuned for part two, and the finale of the finale._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you think? I honestly wasn't sure about this chapter. I've never written anything this long before.


End file.
